Her Soul is Superimposed on My Soul

I first noticed it at the coffee shop on Bleecker Street, the way my hand moved to order chai when I'd been craving dark roast. The barista—a pierced kid with purple hair—looked at me strangely when I corrected myself, switching back to my usual americano. But as I walked away, I could taste cinnamon and cardamom on my tongue, sweet and warm like a memory that wasn't mine.

That was three weeks ago, before I understood what was happening to me. Before I knew about Lydia.

The episodes started small. I'd reach for books I'd never heard of, my fingers knowing exactly where to find them on my shelves. Poetry collections by women whose names meant nothing to me, yet whose words felt familiar as breathing. I'd catch myself humming melodies I couldn't place, my voice carrying harmonies in a register slightly higher than my own.

Then came the dreams.

In them, I was someone else—someone smaller, with delicate hands and a laugh that came from deeper in the chest. I'd wake with the phantom sensation of long hair against my shoulders, though I'd kept mine short since college. In the mirror, my own face looked wrong somehow, like a photograph slightly out of focus.

My therapist, Dr. Martinez, suggested stress. "You're going through a lot of changes," she said during our Tuesday session. "New city, new job, new relationship. Sometimes our minds cope by creating... alternate narratives."

But how could she explain the way I'd started speaking French? Fluent, effortless French that flowed from my lips like water, though I'd barely passed Spanish in high school. Or the fact that I suddenly knew how to braid challah bread, my fingers moving in patterns I'd never learned while tears streamed down my face for reasons I couldn't name.

The breakthrough came on a rainy Thursday evening. I was walking home from work when I found myself detouring through Washington Square Park, drawn by something I couldn't identify. My feet carried me to a specific bench—weathered green paint, a small heart carved in the armrest—and I sat down as if I belonged there.

That's when I saw her.

She wasn't visible, exactly, but I felt her presence like pressure in my chest. A young woman, early twenties maybe, with dark curls and paint-stained fingers. She was sitting in the same spot, occupying the same space, and for a moment our two realities overlapped so completely that I couldn't tell where she ended and I began.

"You can see me," she said, and her voice came from my own throat.

I tried to speak but found I had no words. Instead, images flooded my mind—not memories, but experiences. A cramped studio apartment with canvases stacked against every wall. The taste of cheap wine and expensive dreams. A phone call that changed everything, a voice saying words like "malignant" and "aggressive" and "I'm sorry, but..."

"Lydia," I whispered, though I'd never known her name until that moment.

"You're wearing my soul," she said, and there was wonder in her voice rather than accusation. "Like a coat that doesn't quite fit."

The rain had stopped, but I was shaking. "I don't understand."

"I died here," she said simply. "On this bench, two months ago. The cancer got too strong to carry anymore, so I just... let go. But I wasn't ready. There was so much I hadn't finished, so much I hadn't said."

I looked around the park, seeing it through her eyes now. The fountain where she'd sketched strangers on Sunday afternoons. The chess tables where she'd fallen in love with a boy who played like he was dancing. The tree where she'd carved her initials with someone whose name still made her soul ache.

"Why me?" I asked.

"I don't know." Her presence felt lighter now, less like possession and more like partnership. "Maybe because you were the right frequency. Maybe because you needed me as much as I needed you."

That was true, though I hadn't admitted it to myself. Since moving to the city, I'd felt disconnected, going through the motions of a life that felt borrowed. My job in marketing felt hollow, my relationships surface-deep. I'd been sleepwalking through my days, waiting for something to wake me up.

"What do you need?" I asked.

"To finish." Through my eyes, she looked toward the east side of the park. "There's a gallery on Sullivan Street. The owner's name is Marcus. I was supposed to have a show there—my first real exhibition. Everything's ready, but..."

"But you weren't there to see it through."

"Will you help me?"

I nodded before I could think better of it. What else could I do? Her dreams were tangled up with mine now, her unfinished business weighing on my chest like stones.

The next day, I called in sick to work and walked to Sullivan Street. The gallery was small, elegant, with floor-to-ceiling windows that caught the afternoon light. A man in his fifties with kind eyes and paint under his fingernails was arranging sculptures on pedestals.

"Excuse me," I said, my voice coming out softer than usual, with an accent I didn't recognize as my own. "Are you Marcus?"

He looked up, and his face went pale. "My God," he whispered. "You sound just like... but that's impossible."

I felt Lydia stirring in my chest, her memories surfacing like bubbles in champagne. "I'm here about Lydia Chen's exhibition."

Marcus sat down heavily on a nearby stool. "Lydia's dead," he said quietly. "She died two months ago. We postponed the show indefinitely."

"I know." The words felt strange on my tongue. "But her work deserves to be seen. She would have wanted that."

For the next hour, I found myself describing paintings I'd never seen, explaining the symbolism in works I'd never studied. Marcus listened with growing amazement as I told him about Lydia's vision, her hopes for the exhibition, her dreams of connecting with people through her art.

"Who are you?" he finally asked.

I looked at my reflection in the gallery window and saw two faces superimposed—mine and hers, blending at the edges like a double exposure. "I'm someone who knew her," I said, which was both true and impossible.

The exhibition opened two weeks later. I stood in the corner, watching people move through Lydia's world—abstract paintings that seemed to pulse with life, sculptures that captured the weight of dreams deferred. An art critic from the Village Voice called it "haunting and transcendent, as if the artist's spirit lives on in every brushstroke."

If only she knew how literally true that was.

As the evening wound down, I felt Lydia's presence growing lighter, more translucent. Her work was in the world now, her voice finally heard. The unfinished business that had tethered her to this plane was slowly unwinding.

"Thank you," she whispered inside my mind.

"Thank you," I replied, because she'd given me something too—a sense of purpose, a reason to feel deeply again. Through her eyes, I'd rediscovered beauty in small moments, passion in creative expression, the weight and wonder of being truly alive.

Over the following weeks, her presence faded gradually, like morning mist burned away by sunlight. But she left traces—a love of museums I'd never had before, the ability to see color in ways that made me gasp, a understanding that life is too short and too precious to sleepwalk through.

I quit my marketing job and started writing, words flowing from my fingertips like they'd been waiting there all along. Not her words, but mine, informed by her spirit and strengthened by her courage.

Sometimes, when I'm working late at night, I can still feel her—a warm presence at the edge of my consciousness, a reminder that souls can touch across the boundaries of life and death, that we are all more connected than we imagine.

Her soul is superimposed on my soul, and I am more myself because of it.