I’m haunted by the ghost of you. Not in the ways you might think but it’s true. I’m haunted by memories that never came.
We may have never physically met but your presence and your touch linger. But how can a touch that you’ve never felt linger? This is the way you’ve haunted my mind. Constantly causing me to think deeper, find more meaning, reach for understanding. Grow. You had seeped into every little thought, but now I can have an occasional one without you at the forefront.
And your presence is always in the background,. Sometimes it’s a gentle presence, other times like a lioness ready to take down her prey. Eyes locked in, slow pacing, lips licked, memorizing my every movement and all my patterns. Just waiting. Waiting to take your prey.
But the gentle presence, that’s the one I hold onto. Your genuine happiness for me for the progress I’m making. Your encouragement, your words of wisdom, gentle pushes to keep going. And most of all that smile. I think that somehow you know how I’m doing and what I’m doing. I feel it deeply but there’s no way you possibly could. It’s as though our souls still communicate through time and space.
I can feel the moments when you would have gently touched my lips, neck, and arms in small satisfying jolts of electricity that cause chills. The touch that lingers even though I’ve never felt it. As if on a different timeline, in a different world, or in another lifetime it’s happening in that very moment.
What we could have been haunts me. But not in the ways you’d think. It’s not dragging me down, I’m not moping around wishing for what could have been. If I’m unsteady, you’re there. If I’m nervous, you’re there. When I feel doubt, insecurity, a lack of confidence, anything less than what you always knew I am and could be, you’re there. You haunt me by being my strength and the positive voice in my head. The one that tells me to keep going. Always louder than the negativity.
But you’re the loudest when I’m happy.