The Dead Romantics

by Ashley Poston

He hugged me tighter. “Your grandma—my mother—told me once that the wind is just the breath of everyone who came before us. All the people who’ve passed on, all the ones who’ve taken a breath—” And he took a breath himself, loud and dramatic, and exhaled. “They’re still in the wind. And they’ll always be in the wind, singing. Until the wind is gone. Do you hear them?”

Love wasn’t a whisper in the quiet night. It was a yelp into the void, screaming that you were here.

Because ghost stories were just love stories about here and then and now and when, about pockets of happiness and moments that resonated in places long after their era. They were stories that taught you that love was never a matter of time, but a matter of timing.

It was a good sort of pain. The kind that reminded me that I was still alive, and there was still life to live and memories to make and people to meet.