The ghost of every mosquito I have ever killed lives in my lungs. I think they were trying to get to my heart—are they still so hungry, even now, even dead?—but got lost, as mosquitoes do. They're no longer looking for a way out. It must be very warm in there. The ghost of the mosquito whose bite I scratched at so much it's left a pink scar on my ankle keeps tickling the back of my trachea and making me hiccup. The ghost of the mosquito who never touched me until I crushed it under a flip-flop prefers to stay nestled in the inferior lobes, right next to the four mosquitoes I burned with a bug zapper. Ghosts of mosquitoes who drank from my wrists, from my earlobes, from the back of my knees, burrow into my bronchi to drink the ghost of my blood. And I let them. Why not? They can't hurt me anymore.
I am allergic to mosquitoes, though I did not know this for most of my life. It's because of them my skin swells, hard, red, feverish, itchy-itchy-itchy; because of them, my arms and legs are mottled with half-healed tissue. The ghosts are not sorry. The ghosts are not forgiven. The ghosts do nothing but dig and probe and sing—they are all always singing, if you can call it singing, but I do. The music grows louder with each new phantom sister who finds her way through my arteries, lost and hungry and strung along the sweet scarlet song, welcomed into a haunted home. They died for this. Can that be forgiven? I ask. The ghosts of my mosquitoes sing. They cannot hear me. They died because they could not hear me. Can that be forgiven? I think, but don't ask, and then move on from. There are bigger things to deal with than phantom insects stuck in a chest.
