This is the story of me as a girl and you as a ghost.

This story takes place today, but also last spring, and last month, and any day now.

In this story, you were a boy before you were a ghost.

In this story, you as a boy wore t-shirts with hoodies, black jeans, and boots. But your favorite outfit was a gray long-sleeve shirt with gray sweat pants and gray socks, which I also liked to wear and which is ironic because now you are a ghost. Back when you were a boy and I was a girl, though, we’d sit on my bed in our all-gray outfits under the bright twinkling lights and sink into the room and pretend not to know that soon you’d stop being a boy and start being a ghost.

Before you were a ghost, what you liked most was music. Listening to it, talking about it, playing it in your studio and by the river and on Mike’s porch.

Before you were a ghost, you loved. You loved your dogs, other dogs, cookie dough ice cream, rusty hinges in old houses, the smell of madrone burning in a campfire, and re-runs of 60 Minutes.

You loved your family and friends. Before you were a ghost you loved me, the girl.

You as a ghost still love. Still love me, the girl.

You as a ghost can no longer love. Ghosts, of course, cannot love.

This story of me as a girl and you as a ghost is true and not true. This story was almost true, but is not yet. This story may become true—tonight, tomorrow, next year, in ten years. This story also is true now.

In a different story, we read about ghosts together, me leaning against your shoulder in the wooden alcove of the coast-side library. We trade folklore about spirits and shadows and Dark Watchers.

In a different story, we rub shoulders with ghosts on moonlit walks through the manzanita.

In that story we are old, and our younger selves are different types of ghosts, following a few strides behind, haunting the corners of our cabin, surfacing when we reminisce over wine. In that story we do not become ghosts until much later, and maybe we do not become ghosts at all, but pass into the night without notice.

In a different story, you stay a boy.

You becoming a ghost almost makes me, the girl, a ghost. A half-ghost. A wisp of hot breath in the place a human should be.

Sometimes I love you more as a ghost, even though I shouldn’t. Maybe we are better together, me as a girl and you as a ghost.

In this story, before you were a ghost, you dreamed. You dreamed of people you knew and people you didn’t know yet. You dreamed of driving up the coast, and hiking between alpine lakes, and planting berry bushes. You dreamed of big tortoiseshell eyeglasses and small pink painted toenails. Some dreams were better than others.

I am sure that becoming a ghost means giving up dreaming.

In this story, you as a ghost are leaves lost to a lake. You are ripples pushing outward, breaking and spreading autumn colors. You as a ghost are balloons lost to the sky. You are balloons instead of leaves, blowing from sharp branches.

You as a ghost haunts you as a boy. You as a ghost haunts you as a ghost.