Writing Out the Ghost

The pen moves like it’s alive.

I don’t feel my hand guiding it—only the hum in my bones, the pulse behind my eyes, a rhythm older than breath. The ink bleeds through the page in jagged rivers, spilling lines before I’ve even thought them. That’s how it always starts: the words arriving already shaped, already urgent, as if whispered by the city itself through the cracks in the wall.

I’m sitting at the desk by the window—no, *we’re* sitting. Me and the poem. We’ve fused. My breath comes in gasps between consonants, inhaled on the commas, held at the semicolons. The room shivers. Not metaphorically. The glass in the window pane trembles, just slightly, like it’s afraid.

Outside, New York drowns in heat, a fever dream of disco smoke and burnt wiring. The blackout left its ghost in the air two weeks ago, and the city still stutters—radios crackling nonsense, streetlights blinking like dying eyes. But here, in my Chelsea apartment, I am not drowning. I am *writing*.

And tonight, I am writing a man out of existence.

*“Glass Voice,”* I whisper, testing the name on my tongue. It tastes like mercury.

The poem has no title yet. It doesn’t need one. I *know* what it is.

It’s a banishment.

Dr. Voss has been watching me—too close, too long. His voice: that cool, grating rasp of stone over glass. I’ve heard it in my head even when he wasn’t there. Worse, I’ve heard him in the margins, between lines, in the silence where a stanza should breathe. He doesn’t belong in my world. He never did.

But he’s been *editing*.

I found it yesterday—how he slips in. A line deleted here. A metaphor defanged. A comma moved just so, to interrupt the flow of revelation. He thinks I don’t notice. He thinks I don’t know he’s watching from the edges, waiting for my verses to falter so he can step in with his quiet diagnosis, his clipboard of corrections.

But I’ve seen him.

In the flicker of the hallway lamp. In the way my reflection in the mirror blinks a second too late. In the poem I wrote when the sky turned gold at 3 a.m.—*that* one, the one where Mira and I danced on a bridge made of burning sheet music. He was there, standing at the rail in a long coat, taking notes as the flames curled around us. I didn’t remember writing him in.

That’s not how this works.

I made this world. Thread by thread, word by word, in the silence of the white room with the humming lights. I built the East Village from a memory of sunlight on brick. I carved Mira’s laugh out of a line Plath never finished. I poured my blood into the subway tunnels so they’d glow when the trains passed.

This is *mine*.

And he is stealing from it.

So tonight, I take back control.

The poem spills forward—black water, mercury, holy fire. I write him as a voice without a body, a presence that colonizes silence. I describe how he enters through the ears, how his syllables burrow behind the eyes, how he hollows out a mind and calls it *treatment*. I write him as a parasite made of syntax, as a grammar of fear. I give him no face. No hands. Only sound—cold, polished, inescapable sound.

And then I write his end.

No trial. No mercy. I don’t exorcise him with prayers. I erase him with a metaphor.

*Let him dissolve in the static between stations,* I write.

*Let him bleed into the hum of dead televisions.*

*Let him become the silence after a scream.*

I don’t kill him.

I unwrite him.

And as I do, the room responds.

The air thickens. The walls *breathe*—inward, sucking at the edges of the paper like something is being pulled through. The pen vibrates violently, then snaps in half.

I drop it.

The final line is already scorched onto the page, though I don’t remember writing it:

> *And when the words are gone, the page remembers nothing of the hand that wrote them.*

I stare.

My chest heaves. My fingers tremble. A thin line of blood runs from my nose, unnoticed.

It’s done.

It’s *over*.

Voss is gone. Banished. Deleted from the text of my life.

I close the notebook. Press it to my chest. The cover is warm—almost pulsing. I can feel the poem inside, settling, like a creature curling into sleep.

Outside, the city shifts.

The static on every radio in the building cuts out at once. All up and down 23rd Street, TVs blink to life with the same grainy image—an old black-and-white broadcast of a woman singing in French. No sound. Just her mouth moving, endlessly.

I smile.

It worked.

I *felt* him leave. Like a tooth pulled from a jaw. A pressure gone.

Now there’s only silence.

Real silence. The kind that hums with possibility.

I stand. My legs are weak. I don’t care. I walk to the window and press my forehead to the glass.

Below, a woman walks out of the bodega with a paper bag. She stops. Turns. Looks up.

At me?

No. Up. To my window.

But… I don’t recognize her. She’s young, wearing a yellow dress, her hair frizzled from the humidity. She stares for a long moment.

Then she raises one hand. Not waving.

Pointing.

At the window.

At *my* window.

I flinch. Step back.

The streetlight flickers once. Twice.

When it steadies, she’s gone.

I tell myself she wasn’t real. A projection. A residual echo. One of the city’s many ghosts.

But my fingers curl around the notebook tighter.

It’s done, I tell myself. It’s *over*.

I go to the door. Turn the knob.

I’ll walk to Mira’s. Tell her what I’ve done. Watch her eyes widen. Hear her laugh—low and smoky and alive. We’ll drink cheap red wine and burn the old copies of his notes. We’ll watch the sunrise paint the rooftops gold.

I turn the knob again.

It doesn’t budge.

I frown. Rattle it.

Stuck?

I lean into the door, push.

It doesn’t open.

It doesn’t *give*.

I step back. Look at it.

The wood is the same. The brass knob still tarnished from summer sweat.

But when I press my palm flat against it—no, not *against*.

There’s no gap.

No seam.

It’s not a door anymore.

It’s a wall.

Solid. Unbroken. Brick, painted white.

I spin around.

The apartment is the same. Chair. Desk. Bed. Window.

But where the door should be—only wall.

No frame. No hinges. No sign it was ever there at all.

I rush to it. Scratch at the paint.

My nails scrape against something unyielding.

“Open,” I whisper.

Nothing.

I bang. Hit it with my fist.

The sound is flat. Absorbed.

No echo.

No answer.

I turn. The room watches me. The notebook lies on the desk, closed.

And then—faint, unbearable—it starts.

A sound.

From behind the bricks.

Scratching.

Like a pen.

Like a pen writing slowly, deliberately, one word at a time.

Scratch.

The sound is sharp. Thin. Metallic.

Not the soft scratch of pencil lead on paper—no, this is louder. Harder. Like the tines of a fork dragged across enamel. Or a blade testing its edge.

Scratch.

It pauses.

I freeze. Hand still pressed to the wall. Ear tilted toward the bricks.

Nothing.

Then—again.

*Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.*

Slow. Measured. Deliberate.

From behind the wall where the door used to be.

From beyond.

From *outside*.

I press my palm flat again, fingers splayed. The paint is cool, damp with condensation. I trace the surface inch by inch—as if I might find a seam, a weak spot, a memory of where the wood grain met the threshold. But there’s nothing. Just smooth, unbroken plaster, painted over the brick with the same flaking white used throughout the building. No nail holes. No outline. As if the door never existed.

And yet the sound comes from the other side.

Scratch.

A pause.

Then a faint *click*, like the nib catching on a fiber.

I lean in until my forehead touches the wall.

"Hello?" I whisper.

Silence.

I press harder. My breath fogs the surface.

"Is someone there?"

Scratch.

Not a reply. A continuation. As if whoever holds the pen didn’t hear me. Or worse—heard me, and chose to keep writing anyway.

My skin goes cold.

It’s *him*.

It has to be.

Voss.

I *unwrote* him. I *erased* him. I felt the silence settle in my bones like snow. But he’s still here. Still *writing*. Still *editing*.

Or—worse—was he never gone at all?

I step back. My pulse hammers in my throat, in my wrists, behind my teeth. I look at the window. The street below is empty. The bodega’s neon sign flickers, half letters dead—*C__F_ — but the woman in the yellow dress is gone. No movement. No faces in the windows across the way. No one. Just heat and shadow and the low, constant hum of the city’s hunger.

I turn back to the wall.

"Open," I say, louder. "You don’t belong here. This is *my* world. I made it. You can’t keep rewriting it."

No answer.

Just the scratch.

*Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.*

It’s slow. Patient. Mocking.

I rush to the desk. Fling open the notebook. The pages flutter—still warm, still damp with ink. The poem lies there, whole, black, final:

> *Let him dissolve in the static between stations…*

> *Let him bleed into the hum of dead televisions…*

> *Let him become the silence after a scream…*

I trace the lines with my fingertip. The ink doesn’t smudge. It’s fused. Permanent.

It *should* have worked.

But the wall is still here. The door is still gone. And someone is writing on the other side.

My breath comes fast. Too fast. I press a hand to my chest, feel the drumbeat under my ribs. The air in the room feels heavier now, thick with humidity and the sour tang of drying sweat. The ceiling fan above me groans on its rusted hinge, turning once, then stopping. I reach up, give it a shove. It stutters. Whirs. Starts again.

I go back to the wall.

"Listen to me!" I say, voice breaking. "You don’t have power here! This isn’t your clinic! This is *New York*! 1977! The blackout left the city raw, and I—*I* wove the dreams back together! I gave it rhythm! I gave it *soul*! You can’t just—"

Scratch.

Again.

And this time—different.

Not random.

A pattern.

I tilt my head.

Scratch. Scratch. Scratch. *Pause.*

Scratch. Scratch. *Pause.*

Scratch-Scratch. Scratch-Scratch-Scratch.

My breath hitches.

Morse code.

I learned it once—years ago—from an old radio operator in Queens who said the city still spoke in dots and dashes, even when the words failed. I used it in a poem once. A love letter to Mira, hidden in the footnotes.

And I *know* this sequence.

It’s not a word.

It’s a *name*.

...I pause, heart stalling.

Then, from between the bricks, it comes again—clearer this time:

*Scritch. Scritch. Scritch. Pause.*

*Scritch. Scritch. Pause.*

*Scritch-scrith. Scritch-scrith-scrith.*

**S-A-R-A-H.**

My name.

Spelled out.

By *him*.

By Voss.

But how?

I didn’t write him back in.

I didn’t *invite* him.

Unless—

Unless he was never out.

Unless the poem didn’t work.

Unless *I didn’t write it at all*.

I step away from the wall like it’s burning. My legs tremble. I grip the edge of the desk. The fan overhead creaks. A fly bounces off the windowpane, again and again, as if it can’t tell glass from air.

I look at the notebook.

At the poem.

At the line I didn’t remember writing:

> *And when the words are gone, the page remembers nothing of the hand that wrote them.*

My breath stops.

Did *I* write that?

Or did someone else?

Someone with a pen?

Someone behind a wall?

I flip the notebook over. Check the back cover. Nothing. Open it again. Flip through the earlier pages. Poems about Mira. About the city. About the way the subway tunnels smelled like burnt almonds and hope. All in my hand. All in my voice.

But—something’s off.

The margins.

They’re… cleaner.

Too clean.

I remember—my margins are always full. Doodles. Arrows. Words crossed out, then written above, then underlined twice. Little spirals in the corners. The nervous markings of a mind that never stops turning.

But now?

The margins are blank.

Too blank.

Like they’ve been *edited*.

Erased.

Sanitized.

I turn to the poem—the banishment—the one I wrote last night. My eyes scan the margins. Nothing. Then—wait.

Top right corner.

Tiny.

Faint.

As if written with a very fine, very careful hand.

Three letters.

In pencil.

Faint but legible.

**V.O.**

I know that initial.

Dr. Voss always signed his case notes that way.

**V.O.**

*Voss, Elias. Attending Psychiatrist.*

But this wasn’t here before.

I *know* it wasn’t.

And yet—there it is.

Curled in the margin like a spider.

I stare at it.

"Get out," I whisper.

The scratching stops.

Silence.

I hold my breath.

Then—slowly—from behind the wall—a new sound.

Not scratching.

*Writing.*

Not on paper.

On the *other side* of the wall.

A pen, pressing into plaster. Dragging. Leaving marks.

I press my ear to the bricks.

A soft, wet sound. The scrape of ink on stone. And beneath it—the whisper of letters forming.

I can’t make it out.

But I *feel* it.

Sentences being built.

Paragraphs.

Notes.

*Clinical observations.*

I pull back.

My hands are shaking. I look around the room. Everything is the same—desk, chair, bed—but it feels smaller now. Flat. Like a stage set. The window looks out onto the same alley, same fire escape, same flickering sign.

But I can’t smell anything.

I close my eyes.

I try to recall the scent of the street—wet garbage, clove cigarettes, diesel, the faint yeast of baking bread from the corner bakery.

*Nothing.*

No smell.

No taste in the air.

Just sterile heat.

I turn to the bookshelf. Grab Mira’s favorite—*The Price of Salt*—a dog-eared paperback with a woman in red on the cover. I open it. Flip the pages.

Blank.

All of them.

Not a single word.

My breath snags.

I throw it down. Grab another.

*Howl*.

Blank.

*The Bell Jar*.

Blank.

All of them.

The city doesn’t just *look* wrong.

It’s *empty*.

It’s *hollow*.

And Voss is writing over it.

From the other side.

I go back to the wall.

"Give it back!" I scream. "Give me back the *words*! You can’t take them! They’re *mine*!"

Silence.

Then—slowly—the scratching resumes.

Not Morse.

Not my name.

Just… *writing*.

A steady, relentless stroke.

Like a doctor filling out a chart.

Like a man making *notes*.

I drop to my knees.

The floor is cool beneath me. The fan creaks. The fly hits the glass again. And again. And again.

And behind the wall—someone writes.

And writes.

And writes.

And I realize—

he’s not just writing *on* the other side.

He’s writing *me*.

And I don’t know which of us is the fiction.

The scratching keeps going.

And I don’t move.

And the city holds its breath.

And the poem—my poem—lies open on the desk, its margins clean, its words final, its author unknown.