i still carry with me pieces of you
they told me i used to talk to ghosts when i was a kid. beside our house, our very first house, there was an old tree where i used to play. i’ve long forgotten its name, but i can still picture its roots and branches and leaves. the splotch of soil where I used to spend my afternoons, escaping my mandatory naps for fresh air and ants on my skin.
solitude was my best friend even as a child. but i don’t think I was really alone. perhaps to get me to sleep, or to make me leave that tree, my mother told me a spirit haunts it and watches over me. they said i would laugh and talk to the air as if a person stood there — a ghost, an imaginary friend. i remember none of it now, but it seems the habit has remained.
the ghost that once watched over me now takes your form. it has the paleness of your skin and the curls of your hair. your tinted lips, the bottle of which we used to share. it even has your voice. and it would talk to me in my dreams. when i sleep, you’re no longer a memory but flesh and bones. you were dancing in your orange sundress, the one you wore back in fifth grade when we stood and spoke together on the stage. your laugh was familiar, as if i had seen you just yesterday, not five years ago.
even in my waking hours, you haunt me still. i tilt my head down ever so slightly whenever visit home. i’m scared i’d see you again, warmer and alive than in my dreams. but deep down, i yearn for it to happen. i play the would-be event in my head countless times. and before i finish its eighth rendition, i am no longer home and back in my dorm.
the more i resist addressing this tangled black yarn made of you in my chest, the more it gets bigger. i ignore and ignore asking what went wrong, thinking failed friendships are a part of growing up, but every day i am reminded that i still carry with me pieces of you. i don’t think the time will come when they will be discarded any more than i can let the ghost of you go.
i look for traces of you around me, and i find you in every inch of my room. from your old test papers magically stored in my folders, to your old sketches at the back of my notebooks. the bracelet you gave me (no, i stole it from you) still sat in the bottom of my drawer. my grandmother asks about you, and i tell her you’re doing okay.
our friends who knew me and you ask about what happened. i couldn’t answer because I honestly have none. we drifted away — plain and simple. sometimes i wish i could tell this story with contempt. i hope i’d remember raised voices, broken glass, and a passing moment of clarity when we both knew everything had come to an end. it would be less cruel feel bile when i think of you, and not this constant ache and uncertain longing.
sometimes i wish our paths would cross again and we’d be just like before — trading food and sharing secrets. but i know what miracles are and don’t believe in one. to hold on to a memory and hope it could happen again, exactly as it was, is simply childish. perhaps i still am, because the best part of you and me were children.
and then i did see you; actual flesh and bones, warm and alive, at the train station between our universities. i looked when you didn’t, and your eyes followed me when i turned my head away. i did nothing, said nothing, until we were separated by the crowd. we returned home at the same time, but weren’t home at the same time. i followed your form amidst the sea of people, wishing i’d said hello, wanting to see more than just your shadow.
you are the ghost in the tree where i used to play. and i will stay under its branches, in your cold, ghastly presence, until i am old and can no longer remember. until then, i’ll gladly carry with me pieces of you. after all, i can’t talk to ghosts anymore — i only write them letters they’ll never read.
This piece was originally posted on Substack on May 5, 2024 and migrated to BearBlog on March 19, 2026.