How do I begin? You drift in, unwelcome, unbidden. A specter wearing the face I once knew, mouthing apologies like they mean something. Perhaps I hate you; perhaps I don’t. The distinction hardly matters. Time was a thread I wound around you, and you let me pull until my hands bled. You stood there, watching, silent as an open grave. You knew. You knew. And still, you did nothing.  

You arrived like warmth at my doorstep, a flicker of sun on frostbitten skin. You let me thaw. You let me believe. And then you vanished again, and I was left with nothing but the phantom ache of where you had been.  

But you were not cruel. Not in the way knives are cruel, not in the way storms break houses down to their ribs. You were absent; you neglected; you were a hollow where something should have been. And perhaps that is the worst cruelty of all.  

I should forget you. I should focus on the ones who stayed, the hands that still reach for mine. But why is it that only your absence gnaws at me like something starving? Why is it only your silence that echoes?  

What am I to do with a ghost? What am I to do with the apology that will never come? I do not want it anymore. It would mean nothing; it would change nothing. I am trapped in the shape of a person I no longer recognize, stitched together with grief and resentment. I hate this, I hate you, I hate everything, and still, I go on breathing.  

You will never understand. You never did. You stood outside my suffering, peering in like a child at a locked door. And now it repeats. The dream, the ache, the slow unraveling. The absence, vast and unrelenting, stretched out its arms to cradle me.  

I am still not whole. I may never be. Perhaps this is what remains of me. A shell, a shadow, a quiet thing carrying its dead.  

I do not ask for much. Only to be free. Only to forget. Only to wake up one day and find myself unburdened.  

Without you.  

You are dead. And I am still here.