ghost

It's been said that spirits-- if you are inclined to believe in them-- sometimes linger long after their physical presence has ceased to exist. Believers claim that it largely occurs in situations that end traumatically, suddenly-- those with the most heightened of emotions swirling around them. They are the ones who leave unfinished business. They leave loose ends.

There are loves like that, too.

It was the most logically illogical thing I've ever wanted, and it had felt so close, once. So lifelike. Too dreamlike to be real, but too real to be make-believe. We would while away sleepy midnight after midnight, talking endlessly, drunk on a new magic we had found together. I never quite figured out the trick.

So I came to believe.

I would nuzzle up against him. I loved his smell. "Those are just the pheromones," he laughed heartily, and I loved that, too. He became something like "base" in a childhood game of tag-- a tangible place where you're safe from everything, and nothing and no one can touch you.

When everything came to a crashing halt-- when we realized that we had to follow divergent paths in order to lead lives that made sense for us, it was sudden, and traumatic, and a loss. It was a loss of lives that could have been. They had glistened before us, full of promise not meant to be realized.

Loose ends. Unfinished business.

He has become a ghost in my life, and perhaps in his own. Every so often, I'll be left with a message from beyond, some evidence that he still exists, in some form, somewhere. I'll catch a glimpse of him too briefly. I'll get a text that rings with the most wonderful, terrible sound in all the world. I never give up the opportunity to tease him.

"How's my favorite phantom?" I'll giggle. "It's been too long. I need a proper haunting."

And I'll get a witty quip back, or all too familiar laments. And I'll sigh, and close my bright, starry eyes for a moment, holding the magic still within them. Deep down, I'll know that he chose the right path, and that someday, it will all make sense for us both.

But when things go wrong, he's where my mind wanders. That's begun to make me wonder if it isn't everything else in the world that makes up wandering for me.

Maybe he is home-- if in my memory only.

I have moved on with my life. I've been through many incarnations since those carefree days. In the process, I have had to make peace with the fact that some ghosts may never stop haunting.

For now, I will just take solace in the fact that the right things always come back around.