There once was a monk who lived alone on a remote hill beyond any of the known villages. One night, a thief appeared upon the monk’s remote hill.

In a small village, in the most remote part of the world, a young man worried incessantly about his life.

It was about ten years ago I found one of my coworkers crying in the dressing room at the store we worked at.

I once heard a story about the Earth. That anytime we chose to break apart her soil, to till the land, she felt the pain in her core.

There once was a young man who spent his days dragging a massive stone up the steepest mountain in the village.

“I had left him once. Separated from him and took my son. I got an apartment, and my son had learned everything you know? Everything he needed to for the future, of how life was going to be,” she paused and the breeze consoled her.

Hotel room. Drunk. New York. Someone else is snoring next to you in the depths and bleak results of your shut eyes. The air in and out, your mind tries to race but staggers instead, like your feet on the cobblestone parkways of soho a few hours ago before you lost consciousness.

Right now I’m pushing my glass around in a small line formed from the condensation seeping onto the table. The woodgrain, dark, chestnut I think, is resilient against the moisture. The entire reason I am here is due to a blind date situation. Not my blind date, but my best friend who is sitting across from me overwhelmed with nerves.

We’ve always been able to commune with the dead. Well, not just the dead but other things that haunt our world as well. It didn’t seem to be unusual at the time.

There was a young girl, hair back in a bun, perhaps the age of 12 years old, rushing forward with earbuds in, her ballet shoes in her right hand, dangling by twisted laces. A black turtle neck fought the crisp evening air. Eyes down, she pushed past me, and was gone. I thought of my own daughters.

There’s something that your parents aren’t telling you, and it’s for the best, right now.

Imagine if you knew what the sunset will look like casting shadows over five years from now, or how your hands will feel on the cool pavement after a storm eleven years from tomorrow

I mean, on the other side. A ghost. Some sort of spiritual delay like the others. I check in on the kids when they sleep. Sometimes I appear to them, when they miss me the most, or I give them a soft breeze if they feel as lonely as I did when I was alive.

We move through them like so many weighted bodies dragging through the surf. Then a virus sweeps across the globe, and old routines, old jobs, old identities, old relationships, old friendships are suddenly removed. Voided with various and unsavory labels reserved for the once politically motivated, socially active, or religiously profound.

The entire rooftop had been converted into a series of veranda-esque tables with white draped silk flowing in the western breeze off the Hudson. The sun had just set and I was meandering through the growing crowd of posh fashionistas and horny photographers. The entire scene was overdone in that Meatpacking-Thursday-night sort of way. Fashion week was raging throughout Manhattan and I was there because in some strange twist of fate, I had found my way into the fashion industry.