text: Walking Through Walls When Purim arrives every year, I always wear the same costume - a ghost, and it never fails. When I wear it at home, I feel more like myself than usual. But when I arrive at the ball, I’m suddenly different - I’m not myself anymore. When I walk down the bus, my classmates shout to me, “Same costume again, eh?!” and punch me some. When I stroll my way to the fields, the passing seniors act like they’re scared of me. I smile from one ear to the other, and when I start playing with them. They kick me. But I stay lying down, smiling to myself, adoring what just happened. Purim makes me feel like someone I’m not. The costume’s thought came naturally to me,’ I will dress as to how I am in reality,’ I thought to myself, ‘ *a ghost*.’ But when I arrived at the ball for my first time, I wasn’t a ghost - but someone else. I was getting noticed. I would be laughed at for smiling awkwardly at strangers that greet me, I’d be bullied for not wanting to be with a girl, and every year for the past five, I’d be laughed at for coming with the same costume. But to me, it was fun. People talked to me, I was noticed for doing something, and I wasn’t just a shell, I was a living thing because others recognized it, and I loved it. Every ball, I used to dance with everyone in the hall room, feeling normal. But this one was different. I walked my way to the fields with a shovel. The wind covered me as a clock, rustling the leaves of the trees surrounding me. It seemed like the world was asleep, and I was the only one awake. But when don’t I feel this way? When I’m among my family, I am an individual of my own, never a part of them. And in class, I can shout, and no one would notice. I can’t trust nor feel like I belong nowhere. At times like these, I listen to music. Music was my refuge. I could crawl between the notes and curl back to my loneliness. As I walk up to the tree marked with the letter ‘A.’I start digging next to it. I don’t know if it was dawn or I just saw everything as red from anger, but I could feel my muscles aching, leaves falling on top of my head. ‘Just a bit more,’ I tell myself. And when I see it, drop down the shovel and sigh - *it’s still there.* I brush the dirt from the sheet I just pulled out - a sheet just like my own, with two small holes for eyes and a slightly bigger one for a mouth. - it was Asi’s costume. Tears of memory start rolling down my cheek. I remember his smell from that day. It was right after we ate at the coffee shop next to our house, and he spilled a whole bottle of lemonade on me. Every time we went there, I’d embarrass us, one time, I flipped the whole table, and another I told him in a British accent, ‘What is this bloody food. A twat innit?’ as the waiter crept on us about to ask if everything is fine. The image of me kneeling to tie my shoe, Asi turning to me, his left side lit by the car coming, and the sound of him flying ten meters forward never left my head. Asi was never buried, his body just fell apart, so I made our own spot. I planted our costume in the place where we became ‘the unseen.’ He and I were transparent humans. One time on a trip, we were both forgotten at that spot, just no one noticed us. In the panic of it all, we became aware of each other and realized we were one of the same. We called ourselves ‘the unseen.’ At Asi’s funeral, every family member that gave a small speech said ‘God takes just the best’ or asked, ‘why does God do this to us?’ I could feel my heartbeat through my whole body, pumping as one angry individual. I went upstage and let myself out for the first time; “God doesn’t do this to us. We do it to ourselves. We can’t live on thinking our actions don’t have meaning. Take responsibility for the action you do and NEVER mention god. We do what *we* want.” I left the stage, and the crowd was in shock, and then everyone started cheering. I looked around, in awe of being in the moment, people caring about me and what I’ve just said. Of course, that was what I would’ve said if I thought anyone would care about what comes out of my mouth. So I just left. I never grew old. I’m always stuck in time. Stuck in the same moment where the only human on planet earth that knew me, and felt me not as a shell, was gone into the darkness. When I fall asleep, I dream of you coming to me through the walls like a ghost, asking me if I want to go eat, him saying he can still smell the lemonade coming off of me. And I wake up in a panic at once. Then I realize I am a ghost too, so I’ll just walk through my wall to you and feel whole again.