A Ballad of Phantoms and Hope

by K.M. Moronova

I always thought that ghosts were scary or unnecessarily angry at the world. Now I understand that they are just people—hurting in the same ways as we had in life.

Ghosts are sadness and regret. Our hearts bleed as much as the living.

Nothing was fair in life—why would it be different in death?

Heartless assholes aren’t born, you know. They’re trained into it. Their souls have been drained early and thoroughly by the wicked people before them. Hurt people tend to hurt people.

“Who says death is the end of us? We’re here for a reason, are we not? You are still as much alive in spirit as you ever were.”

Not knowing what something looks like is often more frightening, because you imagine exactly what you don’t want it to be.

I’m convinced that the living are the ones that keep us here—their desire to hurt us even in death. The knife can forever be plunged deeper, even into corpses.

Would you believe me if I told you when I was alive all I wanted was to die?”

Were you mentally unwell? I want to say, who isn’t? Our minds are all so different and ill in alternate ways, yet there is a profound comfort in knowing we are not alone in it.

Love isn’t conditional. The broken pieces of us should be where we start, not what we inevitably dig up after years of peeling back layers, only to be tired and skeptical.

I’m still uneasy about ghosts. Just because you’ve become one doesn’t make the unknown any less frightening.

There is no pain greater than feeling left behind. Forgotten.

“You see me,” I whisper, words I’ve never spoken.

How can it be that you come to know someone more than you know yourself?

I don’t want to hide from my demons anymore. I’ve done that long enough.

That’s when I learned how much a person could wound you without a weapon.