Zoe Goldstein (17)
What’s Your Wound?
Yet.
In the forest, a ghost wanders, plucking at a ukulele.
It is hard to tell exactly what the ghost is: it has been dead for so long it has lost its identity. All of its identity, that is, except for its ukulele. The tune it plucks would be upbeat anywhere else, a jaunty sort of tune to keep mouths upturned around a campfire. But here, in the snow-layered forest, it is haunting. That is what the ghost is doing, too: haunting, although not very well. There isn’t enough malice in the ghost’s heart, or terror, or self-hatred. Maybe the ghost isn’t haunting at all, just peeking through the veil, remembering snow and branches and wind. It’s lonely being dead. Even lonelier than this wintry forest. The ghost knows this.
If you listened closer to the song, maybe you’d feel something prodding at the edges of your mind. Some kind of ungrasped meaning, or beseechment. But nobody's listening closer yet.
Also, the ghost is bleeding profusely out of its right side.
Well, let’s put it this way: the thing that the ghost was before is bleeding out of its right side.
And so, here are the two things defining this shapeless, wispy ghost: a ukulele and a caricature of a wound.
It takes Maxine a long time to realize that the uke’s tune is less of a song and more of a... something else.
Maxine has been sitting here for two hours and she is starting to get bored of this not knowing.
The stump she is sitting on is uncomfortable and her hair is soaked through with snow and so is her coat even though it was marketed as waterproof. She can feel rivulets of water dripping down her face and her humid human heat inside the coat, but most of all, her heart beating inside her chest.
She is so small in this huge forest, and she feels that gaping insignificance eating away at her. Her heart is beating rapidly because she can feel herself fading away and she can feel that insignificance swallowing her heart and the only thing she can do is be angry. Thus the buh-bump of her heart against her ribs, reminding her that she lives.
She thinks about those horse movies where there’s a huge plain and then the main character rides a horse wildly across the plain and the camera pans across the beautiful grassy backdrop. Maxine’s heart feels like it is beating as fast as that horse is running.
When she watched those horse movies, she always thought that the only way to keep up with that horse must’ve been to put the camera on a horse, too, so that it would be able to film everything.
She still wonders if that’s true. One time she wrote a story for English class about a horse cameraman and her teacher handed it back with a smiley face and wrote, “This is hilarious! Great job! Next time, try making it have a deeper theme!”
Despite all the exclamation points, she got a B-. She was not happy with that grade. She had worked hard on the story, tried to give the horse cameraman a tortured past that motivated him. The teacher had not appreciated it and that was when Maxine had stopped watching horse movies and making an effort in English class. She hasn’t tried much at all in anything, since.
She watches the ghost as it flits back and forth. It doesn’t have much of a form. It’s more like a smudge, a lingering wisp of smoke. Yet, the cold winter winds blow one way and the ghost moves the other. It resists, even now.
The ghost plucks out that frustratingly unknowable song and Maxine clenches her fists. Even her palms are sweaty. She feels like she’s the hottest thing, radiating fire out of every pore.
“Please stop,” she says to the ghost and her words come out as a whisper. She cannot bear this unknowing, how the song seems to be saying something she needs to hear but doesn’t want to.
The smudge of a ghost turns to her. Or, at least, she thinks it does. There is not really much front and back or side to it. It is just there. The ukulele almost floats. An owl hoots. Maxine does not move.
The ghost stops plucking at the uke.
Suddenly there’s a river of cold inside Maxine.
She knows that the ghost is staring at her.
She holds her breath for fifteen, twenty seconds. Guilt. The ghost’s curse is eternal silence and she just told it to shut up.
“Actually, could you play it again?”
There’s another stump next to Maxine. The ghost sits on it. Its wounded side is next to her and she almost cringes at the bloody sight of it.
“What’s your wound?” she asks.
The ghost begins to play a song. A new song.
It was not so long ago that I lived. But it is long enough that I have forgotten much of what I was, besides this tune.
This tune, and how to turn it from strings to sound.
Can you hear it?
The song the ghost plays is beautiful—that almost tangible musical meaning has finally revealed itself. It has words to it that are not song and will never be. It is not so much a song as a story. Maybe there is less difference between the two than Maxine thinks.
She nods vigorously. “Please, continue. Tell me more about your music.”
I am so glad you enjoy my music.
The funny thing is, when my life ended, it had been years since I had touched this instrument or sounded a single note. When I awoke here, in this form, the ukulele was in my hands and I was alone.
It had been years, many years.
It pleases me very greatly to play for you. I had almost forgotten what playing for someone else sounded like.
Maxine is unsure of what to say. She is fascinated by the ghost’s music, and the apparition of the ukulele, but doesn’t want to offend by prying. Her mother always told her that if she suspected something was rude, it probably was, and she might as well keep her mouth shut.
She tries anyway. “Your music is beautiful.”
It is not much, but she realizes she has not called anything beautiful in a long time.
The ghost pauses, then begins again.
Thank you.
I’m sorry, I can’t think of what else to say. My music is my voice, and it has been long since I have used it.
Once the song has stopped, the ghost sighs slightly, its form sagging.
The ukulele sways a little.
“I don’t speak much either,” says Maxine. She only realizes this as she says it. Maybe this is the first time she has actually spoken.
She thinks about the horse cameraman story and she thinks about her small house that she spends hours and hours and hours in. She thinks about how huge the world is and how she is just a tiny girl and she thinks about the bridge over the frozen lake that she walks by every day on the way home from school and she thinks about the silence we all languish in during winter and she thinks about how this silence stays with her throughout the year.
The ghost begins to play another song.
Why did you come here?
The bridge is over on the other side of the forest.
“Do you play any other instruments?” she counters, and the uke sways again but the ghost does not play another song.
“I used to play the flute,” says Maxine wistfully. What she means is that she was a recorder prodigy in grade two and she performed at the music hall and they even wrote an article about her in the town newspaper. She wore a frilly pink dress. She can’t remember any of the actual performances or the name of any of the songs she played. She can’t remember the audience clapping for her and she can’t remember a reporter smilingly bending down to ask her questions to write up for a feel-good article for the newspaper’s website. What she can remember is the joy on her parents’ faces once that article came out, how they went to the nearest burger joint to get cheeseburgers, a bucket of fries, and milkshakes in styrofoam cups. What she can’t remember is the flavor of the milkshake. What she can’t remember is her father ever congratulating her. What she can remember is that the next day when he dropped her off at school her father bragged about the article to the other parents, endlessly, painfully. She stopped her recorder-playing career the next year when the other students learned how to play. Everyone else would get stickers in their calendar for each day they played. The teachers would shower them with candies and pencils if they practiced twenty minutes every day. Maxine had practiced for hours with her mother the year before. This year she only got frowns from the teachers when she received no stickers on her calendar. She doesn’t know where the recorder is now, but she can still feel the grease of that bucket of fries on her fingers and the sugary creaminess of the milkshake on her tongue, although she doesn’t know the flavor. She can almost remember it. Almost.
She wipes her fingers on her pants, trying to get rid of that greasy feeling. A flute is much more glamorous than a secret, recorder-playing past.
The ghost plays the uke again.
Liar! You never played the flute! Flute-players would never have scabby knees like you.
“I said I used to play the flute,” Maxine says sullenly.
Anyone who has ever played a flute has creamy-soft knees.
“Oh, shush,” says Maxine. She can hear the playful tones in the song.
I have forgotten a lot, but I have not forgotten cheeseburgers, plays the ghost. Shall we go get one?
Maxine startles a little—can it read her thoughts?—but nods. She is starving.
For the ghost, Maxine orders a double-bacon cheeseburger, fries, a strawberry-chocolate swirled milkshake, a side of coleslaw, and one of those huge pickles the burger palace is famous for. For herself, she orders a BLT on rye bread and a tall glass of chocolate milk. She hasn’t been able to stomach cheeseburgers for a long time. When the food comes, the waitress remarks that it’s a lot for one girl to eat alone. Maxine remarks that she’s not alone.
Maxine is less hungry than before. This happens a lot. Food makes her think of dinner tables and forks scraping against porcelain and silent, angry stares. Food makes her think of those huge buckets of fries.
She pries open the sandwich and slices up the bacon. She places three bites of bacon across her tongue, savors their taste, then swallows them. She munches the lettuce into a paste in her mouth, dunks the tomatoes in her chocolate milk, and throws them and the rest of the bacon and the bread in the trash.
“How did you learn to play the ukulele? I mean, do you remember?”
I remember fragments. Hands guiding my own hands over the strings. Their vibrations through my fingers. I was young, I believe. I spent many hours practicing.
I remember the joy of it. The joy of practicing, and of playing for others, and the bright clapping after.
The ghost falls silent.
“I remember that too. How it felt when people were clapping, and you had to remind yourself again and again it was for you.”
She offers the tomato-y chocolate milk to the ghost, who hasn’t touched any of its food and cradles the uke.
“You should eat,” says Maxine. “The food is delicious.”
The ghost picks up the uke:
How would you know that? You haven’t eaten much.
The people at the booth in front of them do not turn and look to find the source of the music. It’s quiet at the restaurant, too, just Maxine, the ghost, and a few other scattered people. But no one looks or complains. Maxine wonders.
“Hilarious,” says Maxine, swallowing a mouthful of lettuce paste. “It tastes better this way.”
Maxine chews for a long time and the ghost sits. Finally, she swallows deeply and looks at the ghost.
“Can you eat?”
The uke tips toward the food; the ghost is lowering its head.
Maxine feels grease on her fingers and lettuce paste stuck in her throat and that huge dark thing eating at her heart. Her ears buzz.
Maxine reaches forward, grabs the cheeseburger, and viciously bites into the monster. Whole. Juice runs down her chin and she wolfs it down in seconds. She drains the milkshake, then dips the fries in the residue and eats them as well. Next it’s the coleslaw and the pickle. She wants to throw up. She is stuffed with food. But the uke has perked up again.
Delicious, the uke sings again and again. Delicious, delicious, truly.
“Should we go on a walk?” asks Maxine. She is really, really full and is pretty sure she can’t sit in this sticky red booth any longer. The uke bobs up and down; Maxine takes this as a yes and leaves a few handfuls of coins on the table. They slide through her fingers, coated in grease.
Outside, the cold wind slaps Maxine in the face but the ghost’s uke doesn’t even sway. It’s getting dark out. Tears swim into her eyes. She still has so many questions.
I am glad I found you in the forest today, plays the ghost. It is not as calm being not alive as many might think. And it is nice to play, and have an audience again.
She smiles a little, hopes the ghost can see. Finally she decides to ask the question that has been on her mind all evening, the question she has been avoiding.
“Why did you stop playing, before you….before you died?”
The ghost is quiet, but she does not press, and she does not fear the ghost will leave her. She can see it contemplating, turning the question over and over.
That is a question I often ask myself.
I said before that I do not remember much of living. That is true. But the few strong memories that I retain have to do with my life without music.
After I stopped, the calluses on my fingertips sanded away and my hands became soft again. Things pricked my fingers. Fork tines, and rose thorns, and pencil tips. The pain of them. I remember this.
But this is not what you asked.
In the distance, the door of the diner creaks open and chatter and laughter seep out into the night. The door closes and the street is quiet again, except for the wind.
I gave it up because I was never good enough.
I gave it up because I would never be successful.
I gave it up because I would never make a living.
What I am trying to say is, I gave up for no good reason. But I did. And when I put my ukulele down, I never picked it up again.
“I’m so sorry,” says Maxine. “I…”
You must understand, when I gave up my music, I gave up all else. Speech, happiness, friendship. Without my voice, I was not myself.
Maxine feels raw, all her skin and hair and smiles stripped away. She thinks the ghost can probably see the gaping hole inside her, can probably see all the way through it to the forest beyond the restaurant.
“Who are you?” she asks.
You. I am you, it sings.
“What does that mean?”
We are all not as different as you would think.
My life was nothing, and I was nothing, and in death I am forced to float about without the memories that made me up.
Look closely; you will notice many live in that same way, and die too.
“Then what’s the point?” asks Maxine, kicking sludge away from her feet in order to occupy her mind, which slowly seems to be teetering toward telling her eyes to cry.
There is not a point at all. That is what makes it so hard.
Destiny did not unroll a rose-petal path to success and fame for me. I was talented, yet I still languished, and I died languishing.
We are nothing, and we are meant to do nothing.
A tear leaks from Maxine’s eye.
Yet, sings the uke.
“Yet what?” asks Maxine.
The ghost doesn’t respond. Maxine looks up from the sludge, and the ghost and the ukulele are gone. Maxine is alone with her greasy fingers and wet eyes.
“Where did you go?” she calls out. “Where are you?”
There is no response but the swirling wind.
Maxine tastes the ghost’s word on her tongue, and it slices into the air like a song: Yet.
Zoe Goldstein is a high school student from Massachusetts. She has attended the Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop and the New England Young Writers Conference at Breadloaf. She has also been recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. At school, she is an editor of her school newspaper, the Newtonite.
What’s Your Wound?
Yet.
In the forest, a ghost wanders, plucking at a ukulele.
It is hard to tell exactly what the ghost is: it has been dead for so long it has lost its identity. All of its identity, that is, except for its ukulele. The tune it plucks would be upbeat anywhere else, a jaunty sort of tune to keep mouths upturned around a campfire. But here, in the snow-layered forest, it is haunting. That is what the ghost is doing, too: haunting, although not very well. There isn’t enough malice in the ghost’s heart, or terror, or self-hatred. Maybe the ghost isn’t haunting at all, just peeking through the veil, remembering snow and branches and wind. It’s lonely being dead. Even lonelier than this wintry forest. The ghost knows this.
If you listened closer to the song, maybe you’d feel something prodding at the edges of your mind. Some kind of ungrasped meaning, or beseechment. But nobody's listening closer yet.
Also, the ghost is bleeding profusely out of its right side.
Well, let’s put it this way: the thing that the ghost was before is bleeding out of its right side.
And so, here are the two things defining this shapeless, wispy ghost: a ukulele and a caricature of a wound.
It takes Maxine a long time to realize that the uke’s tune is less of a song and more of a... something else.
Maxine has been sitting here for two hours and she is starting to get bored of this not knowing.
The stump she is sitting on is uncomfortable and her hair is soaked through with snow and so is her coat even though it was marketed as waterproof. She can feel rivulets of water dripping down her face and her humid human heat inside the coat, but most of all, her heart beating inside her chest.
She is so small in this huge forest, and she feels that gaping insignificance eating away at her. Her heart is beating rapidly because she can feel herself fading away and she can feel that insignificance swallowing her heart and the only thing she can do is be angry. Thus the buh-bump of her heart against her ribs, reminding her that she lives.
She thinks about those horse movies where there’s a huge plain and then the main character rides a horse wildly across the plain and the camera pans across the beautiful grassy backdrop. Maxine’s heart feels like it is beating as fast as that horse is running.
When she watched those horse movies, she always thought that the only way to keep up with that horse must’ve been to put the camera on a horse, too, so that it would be able to film everything.
She still wonders if that’s true. One time she wrote a story for English class about a horse cameraman and her teacher handed it back with a smiley face and wrote, “This is hilarious! Great job! Next time, try making it have a deeper theme!”
Despite all the exclamation points, she got a B-. She was not happy with that grade. She had worked hard on the story, tried to give the horse cameraman a tortured past that motivated him. The teacher had not appreciated it and that was when Maxine had stopped watching horse movies and making an effort in English class. She hasn’t tried much at all in anything, since.
She watches the ghost as it flits back and forth. It doesn’t have much of a form. It’s more like a smudge, a lingering wisp of smoke. Yet, the cold winter winds blow one way and the ghost moves the other. It resists, even now.
The ghost plucks out that frustratingly unknowable song and Maxine clenches her fists. Even her palms are sweaty. She feels like she’s the hottest thing, radiating fire out of every pore.
“Please stop,” she says to the ghost and her words come out as a whisper. She cannot bear this unknowing, how the song seems to be saying something she needs to hear but doesn’t want to.
The smudge of a ghost turns to her. Or, at least, she thinks it does. There is not really much front and back or side to it. It is just there. The ukulele almost floats. An owl hoots. Maxine does not move.
The ghost stops plucking at the uke.
Suddenly there’s a river of cold inside Maxine.
She knows that the ghost is staring at her.
She holds her breath for fifteen, twenty seconds. Guilt. The ghost’s curse is eternal silence and she just told it to shut up.
“Actually, could you play it again?”
There’s another stump next to Maxine. The ghost sits on it. Its wounded side is next to her and she almost cringes at the bloody sight of it.
“What’s your wound?” she asks.
The ghost begins to play a song. A new song.
It was not so long ago that I lived. But it is long enough that I have forgotten much of what I was, besides this tune.
This tune, and how to turn it from strings to sound.
Can you hear it?
The song the ghost plays is beautiful—that almost tangible musical meaning has finally revealed itself. It has words to it that are not song and will never be. It is not so much a song as a story. Maybe there is less difference between the two than Maxine thinks.
She nods vigorously. “Please, continue. Tell me more about your music.”
I am so glad you enjoy my music.
The funny thing is, when my life ended, it had been years since I had touched this instrument or sounded a single note. When I awoke here, in this form, the ukulele was in my hands and I was alone.
It had been years, many years.
It pleases me very greatly to play for you. I had almost forgotten what playing for someone else sounded like.
Maxine is unsure of what to say. She is fascinated by the ghost’s music, and the apparition of the ukulele, but doesn’t want to offend by prying. Her mother always told her that if she suspected something was rude, it probably was, and she might as well keep her mouth shut.
She tries anyway. “Your music is beautiful.”
It is not much, but she realizes she has not called anything beautiful in a long time.
The ghost pauses, then begins again.
Thank you.
I’m sorry, I can’t think of what else to say. My music is my voice, and it has been long since I have used it.
Once the song has stopped, the ghost sighs slightly, its form sagging.
The ukulele sways a little.
“I don’t speak much either,” says Maxine. She only realizes this as she says it. Maybe this is the first time she has actually spoken.
She thinks about the horse cameraman story and she thinks about her small house that she spends hours and hours and hours in. She thinks about how huge the world is and how she is just a tiny girl and she thinks about the bridge over the frozen lake that she walks by every day on the way home from school and she thinks about the silence we all languish in during winter and she thinks about how this silence stays with her throughout the year.
The ghost begins to play another song.
Why did you come here?
The bridge is over on the other side of the forest.
“Do you play any other instruments?” she counters, and the uke sways again but the ghost does not play another song.
“I used to play the flute,” says Maxine wistfully. What she means is that she was a recorder prodigy in grade two and she performed at the music hall and they even wrote an article about her in the town newspaper. She wore a frilly pink dress. She can’t remember any of the actual performances or the name of any of the songs she played. She can’t remember the audience clapping for her and she can’t remember a reporter smilingly bending down to ask her questions to write up for a feel-good article for the newspaper’s website. What she can remember is the joy on her parents’ faces once that article came out, how they went to the nearest burger joint to get cheeseburgers, a bucket of fries, and milkshakes in styrofoam cups. What she can’t remember is the flavor of the milkshake. What she can’t remember is her father ever congratulating her. What she can remember is that the next day when he dropped her off at school her father bragged about the article to the other parents, endlessly, painfully. She stopped her recorder-playing career the next year when the other students learned how to play. Everyone else would get stickers in their calendar for each day they played. The teachers would shower them with candies and pencils if they practiced twenty minutes every day. Maxine had practiced for hours with her mother the year before. This year she only got frowns from the teachers when she received no stickers on her calendar. She doesn’t know where the recorder is now, but she can still feel the grease of that bucket of fries on her fingers and the sugary creaminess of the milkshake on her tongue, although she doesn’t know the flavor. She can almost remember it. Almost.
She wipes her fingers on her pants, trying to get rid of that greasy feeling. A flute is much more glamorous than a secret, recorder-playing past.
The ghost plays the uke again.
Liar! You never played the flute! Flute-players would never have scabby knees like you.
“I said I used to play the flute,” Maxine says sullenly.
Anyone who has ever played a flute has creamy-soft knees.
“Oh, shush,” says Maxine. She can hear the playful tones in the song.
I have forgotten a lot, but I have not forgotten cheeseburgers, plays the ghost. Shall we go get one?
Maxine startles a little—can it read her thoughts?—but nods. She is starving.
For the ghost, Maxine orders a double-bacon cheeseburger, fries, a strawberry-chocolate swirled milkshake, a side of coleslaw, and one of those huge pickles the burger palace is famous for. For herself, she orders a BLT on rye bread and a tall glass of chocolate milk. She hasn’t been able to stomach cheeseburgers for a long time. When the food comes, the waitress remarks that it’s a lot for one girl to eat alone. Maxine remarks that she’s not alone.
Maxine is less hungry than before. This happens a lot. Food makes her think of dinner tables and forks scraping against porcelain and silent, angry stares. Food makes her think of those huge buckets of fries.
She pries open the sandwich and slices up the bacon. She places three bites of bacon across her tongue, savors their taste, then swallows them. She munches the lettuce into a paste in her mouth, dunks the tomatoes in her chocolate milk, and throws them and the rest of the bacon and the bread in the trash.
“How did you learn to play the ukulele? I mean, do you remember?”
I remember fragments. Hands guiding my own hands over the strings. Their vibrations through my fingers. I was young, I believe. I spent many hours practicing.
I remember the joy of it. The joy of practicing, and of playing for others, and the bright clapping after.
The ghost falls silent.
“I remember that too. How it felt when people were clapping, and you had to remind yourself again and again it was for you.”
She offers the tomato-y chocolate milk to the ghost, who hasn’t touched any of its food and cradles the uke.
“You should eat,” says Maxine. “The food is delicious.”
The ghost picks up the uke:
How would you know that? You haven’t eaten much.
The people at the booth in front of them do not turn and look to find the source of the music. It’s quiet at the restaurant, too, just Maxine, the ghost, and a few other scattered people. But no one looks or complains. Maxine wonders.
“Hilarious,” says Maxine, swallowing a mouthful of lettuce paste. “It tastes better this way.”
Maxine chews for a long time and the ghost sits. Finally, she swallows deeply and looks at the ghost.
“Can you eat?”
The uke tips toward the food; the ghost is lowering its head.
Maxine feels grease on her fingers and lettuce paste stuck in her throat and that huge dark thing eating at her heart. Her ears buzz.
Maxine reaches forward, grabs the cheeseburger, and viciously bites into the monster. Whole. Juice runs down her chin and she wolfs it down in seconds. She drains the milkshake, then dips the fries in the residue and eats them as well. Next it’s the coleslaw and the pickle. She wants to throw up. She is stuffed with food. But the uke has perked up again.
Delicious, the uke sings again and again. Delicious, delicious, truly.
“Should we go on a walk?” asks Maxine. She is really, really full and is pretty sure she can’t sit in this sticky red booth any longer. The uke bobs up and down; Maxine takes this as a yes and leaves a few handfuls of coins on the table. They slide through her fingers, coated in grease.
Outside, the cold wind slaps Maxine in the face but the ghost’s uke doesn’t even sway. It’s getting dark out. Tears swim into her eyes. She still has so many questions.
I am glad I found you in the forest today, plays the ghost. It is not as calm being not alive as many might think. And it is nice to play, and have an audience again.
She smiles a little, hopes the ghost can see. Finally she decides to ask the question that has been on her mind all evening, the question she has been avoiding.
“Why did you stop playing, before you….before you died?”
The ghost is quiet, but she does not press, and she does not fear the ghost will leave her. She can see it contemplating, turning the question over and over.
That is a question I often ask myself.
I said before that I do not remember much of living. That is true. But the few strong memories that I retain have to do with my life without music.
After I stopped, the calluses on my fingertips sanded away and my hands became soft again. Things pricked my fingers. Fork tines, and rose thorns, and pencil tips. The pain of them. I remember this.
But this is not what you asked.
In the distance, the door of the diner creaks open and chatter and laughter seep out into the night. The door closes and the street is quiet again, except for the wind.
I gave it up because I was never good enough.
I gave it up because I would never be successful.
I gave it up because I would never make a living.
What I am trying to say is, I gave up for no good reason. But I did. And when I put my ukulele down, I never picked it up again.
“I’m so sorry,” says Maxine. “I…”
You must understand, when I gave up my music, I gave up all else. Speech, happiness, friendship. Without my voice, I was not myself.
Maxine feels raw, all her skin and hair and smiles stripped away. She thinks the ghost can probably see the gaping hole inside her, can probably see all the way through it to the forest beyond the restaurant.
“Who are you?” she asks.
You. I am you, it sings.
“What does that mean?”
We are all not as different as you would think.
My life was nothing, and I was nothing, and in death I am forced to float about without the memories that made me up.
Look closely; you will notice many live in that same way, and die too.
“Then what’s the point?” asks Maxine, kicking sludge away from her feet in order to occupy her mind, which slowly seems to be teetering toward telling her eyes to cry.
There is not a point at all. That is what makes it so hard.
Destiny did not unroll a rose-petal path to success and fame for me. I was talented, yet I still languished, and I died languishing.
We are nothing, and we are meant to do nothing.
A tear leaks from Maxine’s eye.
Yet, sings the uke.
“Yet what?” asks Maxine.
The ghost doesn’t respond. Maxine looks up from the sludge, and the ghost and the ukulele are gone. Maxine is alone with her greasy fingers and wet eyes.
“Where did you go?” she calls out. “Where are you?”
There is no response but the swirling wind.
Maxine tastes the ghost’s word on her tongue, and it slices into the air like a song: Yet.
Zoe Goldstein is a high school student from Massachusetts. She has attended the Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop and the New England Young Writers Conference at Breadloaf. She has also been recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. At school, she is an editor of her school newspaper, the Newtonite.