The Ghost

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

He stared blankly at the pond. It was frozen through and through, just like any love that used to flow between us.

I barely recognized his face. Its soft edges had grown hard. His once youthful smile was now set in a granite line. His once warm, dark eyes were vacant. They wouldn’t meet mine.

I had changed too.

When he left, I’d been a husk of a girl - grown so thin I was practically a skeleton. I’d now molded myself into a muscular machine. Tough enough to take any pain and strong enough to bear it for any period of time.

No amount of martial arts filled the hollowness of my face. My eyes. Their hazel color had become so dull it was now a muted brown rather than a kaleidoscope. My hair fell limply at my shoulders. Its end were split after being bleached blonde.

He used to love my dark hair. I fought every day to erase every part of me he had loved. It was easier that way - to live a façade in which he never existed. In which he had never left me.

And here he sat at our old meeting spot. The only memory of us I clutched when missing him was better than emptiness.

“You were supposed to move on,” I whispered.

A tear slipped down my cheek.

He reached out to catch it, but stopped himself.

“I’ve never been good at listening to instructions,” he said with a bittersweet smile.

It softened all his hard edges and melted the ice between us.

He leaned closer to me until I should have felt his breath on my cheek.

“I’ve missed seeing you here,” I admitted. “I’ve missed you more than I’d miss my own heart.”

“No more pretending I’ve crossed over,” he vowed. “No more even attempting it. I’ll be right here whenever you need me.”

I’d been a medium for as long as I could remember, but I now had my very own personal ghost.

And I’d never been so happy.