The Ghost of the Unfinished

The Ghost of the To-Do List

There it lies—
etched in graphite on the parchment of my will,
suspended between the spine of yesterday
and the breathless sigh of tomorrow.
Something.
Something nameless yet bold in its vagueness.
A line item, a shadow,
a phantom task
that refuses to meet its end.

“Clean the attic,” I wrote once.
The words have turned to dust now,
buried beneath newer, shinier intentions:
“Learn the piano.”
“Write a novel.”
“Fix the dripping faucet.”
Oh, how they pile up,
like unclaimed baggage
at the station of procrastination.

The attic?
It has become a museum for forgotten intentions—
cardboard boxes crammed with
old journals
(scribbles of someone I used to be),
a rusty clock that no longer ticks
(time stopped here long before I thought to notice),
and somewhere, a dream
that was packed away for later.
Later?
When does "later" ever come?

To learn the piano!
Yes, it made the list again,
like a haunting refrain that crescendos
only in guilt.
The keys remain untouched,
white and black teeth
smiling at my hesitation,
mocking the dust that sings louder than I ever will.
Each day I tell myself—
after this email, after this nap,
after the seasons rearrange themselves
into something gentler.

The faucet drips.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
The soundtrack of my indifference,
a metronome for time wasted.
Plink.
Plink.
Plink.
Oh, how I’ve learned to love
its monotonous symphony.
It fills the silence,
dances with my thoughts.
And yet—
should I dare silence it,
I would miss its company.
Its persistence reminds me
that the faucet is alive
and I am not.

There is no dust on the words “Write a novel.”
They sparkle still,
a gem too precious to discard,
too heavy to lift.
Each time I sit, pen trembling,
the page becomes a mirror.
And who am I to write anything down
when I cannot even
finish my to-do list?

Oh, the curse of “Something.”
“Something” isn’t tangible.
It isn’t clean like laundry,
or finite like the dishes.
“Something” has no weight,
no color, no scent.
It is the itch I cannot scratch,
the thought that disappears
the moment I try to name it.
“Something” lives in my calendar,
scratched in the margins of my mind,
a lover I can neither embrace nor leave.

And yet,
isn’t this dance beautiful?
This endless waltz of deferral,
this romance of never-done?
For what would I be
without this unattainable task?
Perhaps it is the only thing
that gives me purpose—
this phantom quest
to slay a dragon
that vanishes the moment I draw my sword.

I pour another cup of coffee.
(Is that on the list?)
The steam curls upward,
a ghost escaping its mortal coil.
The mug warms my palms,
and for a moment, I am content.
But then it strikes me—
the coffee machine needs cleaning.
Shall I add it to the list?
No, that’s dangerous.
To add is to give it life.
To add is to curse myself with another
unfulfilled ambition.

Oh, how I wish
for a day with no to-do list!
But wouldn’t that be the cruelest irony?
To wake up
with nothing undone,
no attic to clean, no faucet to fix,
no something lurking,
no ghost to haunt me—
what would I do then?

Would I be free,
or would I crumble under
the unbearable weight of nothingness?
The thought terrifies me more
than the endless procrastination.
Better to carry this weight
than to lose it entirely.

The words linger on the paper,
curling at the edges like dried leaves:
"Something."
Perhaps it’s not a task at all.
Perhaps it’s a reminder,
a whisper from the universe
that life itself is the unfinished project.
The attic, the faucet, the novel—
are they not merely metaphors
for the chaos of existence?
We, the eternal pendulums,
swinging between doing and being.

Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
The faucet speaks again.
Perhaps it is not a lament.
Perhaps it is applause.
For in the end,
to never finish "Something"
is to keep living,
to keep striving,
to keep dreaming of what lies
just beyond the edge of today.

And so, the list grows.
And so, I remain.

#ProcrastinationPoem #ToDoListMusings #UnfinishedThoughts #IntrospectiveWriting #LifeInProgress #DailyStruggles #MindfulMoments #CreativeExpressions