Letters to the Ghosts I Loved

IT happened tomorrow morning.

That strange hour between endings and beginnings — when the night still clings to rooftops, but the sun is already stirring beneath the skin of the sky.

The world holds its breath. The air is soft and questioning. Even the birds wait.

It is then that the ghosts arrive.

Not with chains or footsteps, not draped in white.

They come in memories. In whispers that echo louder than screams.

They come when I am alone with paper and silence — and so I write.

To those I once loved.

To those I still love in secret.

To those I failed, and to the selves I outgrew.

---

To you, who vanished without goodbye,

You were wildfire. Beautiful, unpredictable, and cruel.

You entered my life like a storm breaking after a long drought. I drank your rain like salvation.

We talked about forever the way children speak of flying — believing in it as though our belief alone could keep us in the sky.

That October — remember?

The leaves burned amber and crimson.

You held my face like it was a fragile truth and said we’d never be strangers.

Today, you are a stranger I still ache for.

I don’t hate you for leaving.

But I mourn the silence you left like ash on my tongue — the kind that lingers long after the fire is out.

---

To my mother,

I wore your shawl today.

The faded blue one that always smelled like lavender and rain and worn-out lullabies.

It still does. And when I wrapped it around my shoulders, it felt like you were there. For a moment.

As a child, I thought your distance was coldness.

Now I understand: you were carrying grief too big for words.

Your silence was not a wall — it was protection. A shield forged from exhaustion.

I forgive you.

For what you didn’t say.

For what you couldn’t give.

For loving me the only way you knew how.

And when I cry in the same way you did — quietly, into the sink, with trembling hands — I know:

I carry you, still.

---

To the one I almost built a life with,

We made a home in our imagination.

Curtains, rescue dogs, a little herb garden.

A soft yellow kitchen where you’d hum while I twirled barefoot on cool tiles.

But freedom whispered louder than your vows.

And I followed the call.

Your love was a harbor — mine was a sail.

When you said, “Sometimes love isn’t enough,”

I hated you.

Now I wear that sentence like armor.

I gave the ring back.

But I kept your ghost.

Sometimes, love is not about staying.

Sometimes, it’s about letting go before we shatter what’s still beautiful.

---

To my 17-year-old self,

You hated your body like it had betrayed you.

Waged wars in mirrors.

Counted calories like confessions.

You carved your sadness into poetry and believed pain made you real.

If I could sit beside you now, I’d say:

You are not a problem to be solved.

You don’t need to shrink to be worthy.

You don’t need to bleed to be beautiful.

Someday, you’ll laugh. Loud, deep, full-throated laughter.

You’ll dance in kitchens and kiss people who make you feel like sunlight.

You’ll look in the mirror and say “thank you” instead of “I’m sorry.”

And you’ll know:

Healing is not weakness.

It’s a revolution.

---

To the man who only exists in dreams,

You had no name.

No past. No future.

Only presence. Only now.

You were smoke and shadow, a lullaby in human form.

We never exchanged words, only silences.

And somehow, that was enough.

I remember the scent of you.

The feeling of your fingers on my wrist like an apology I didn’t know I needed.

Even now, some nights, I feel you beside me — the way one senses thunder long before it rumbles.

You arrive with the dreams, and vanish before the morning kettle boils.

Still, I wait for you.

Still, I hope.

---

To the version of myself who stayed,

There’s a world where you never left.

You stayed in the quiet town, married someone kind, taught literature in the same school you once hated.

You are happy in that world.

Content, maybe.

Safe.

But I’m not you.

I chose the winding path, full of risk and poems and solitude.

And I often wonder — did I abandon peace, or did I chase something truer?

I don’t regret choosing the fire.

But I do mourn the soft life I never lived.

---

And so, tomorrow morning will come again.

I’ll rise with the quiet.

Pour tea.

Open this notebook once more.

I will write, again and again,

Not to forget… but to remember with grace.

These letters are not meant to be sent.

They are my ritual.

My reckoning.

My release.

You — all of you — are the ghosts I loved.

And I will not exorcise you.

Because to forget you is to forget the versions of me who loved you.

And those selves, broken and brave, deserve to be remembered too.

And maybe — just maybe —

One day, someone will write me a letter.

Not out of obligation.

Not out of grief.

But out of love that refuses to die.

A whisper, a line, a flicker in the half-light of morning.

A letter

To the ghost I became.