Ghosts

Bill-Age 35
I’m followed everywhere. They shadow me as if I can give them the answers they could never find in life. I see them out of the corner of my eye, no matter how hard they try to hide.
Don't you see them. There is one right there in the corner. I don't think he realizes he is dead. He should, I killed him. I didn’t want to kill him. I didn't want to kill any of them.
The give us a gun and teach us to point and shoot. I can take out the black dot on a piece of paper from miles away. But paper doesn't bleed and a black dot doesn't call out for his mommy as he tries to hold his insides together. They don't teach us how to unsee that.
I tried to make them go away. Drugs, alcohol, sex. None of it worked to burn away the memories. How can you wipe away the memory of digging through body parts looking for tags so you have something to send back to the wives and mothers waiting for something to connect them to their ghosts?
Don't look directly at them. They will drive you crazy. Try to scrub them from your mind. If you don't think about it too hard you might be able to go whole minutes without seeing them.
I tried to leave the ghosts behind. I really did. But they followed me home. They followed me through the walls of my house and into the rooms of my children. I saw them behind the eyes of my wife and heard them in the sound of her breath when I was sleeping. Maybe that's why I woke with my hands around her throat.
Now all I have of my wife and children are ghosts of their memories.
I don't want to see all the ghosts, but once I let one of them in they all come flooding through. Shut the doors. Don't let them in. I want to see and not see at the same time. Can't you see. They are everywhere and nowhere. And so am I.