The words catch in my throat. I am squeezing my stomach, squeezing my neck, trying to force the air to pass through my body. Trying to force the words to pass from my brain to my mouth to tell them what I am. Who I am. They take another bite of bagel in the silence, looking out onto the street. People walk by and the late morning breeze makes the sunlight dance on the sidewalk through the leaves of Linden trees planted along the roadside. I take a long, small sip of coffee, sitting in the silence as though we're just enjoying a quiet moment together as friends. Which we are, I suppose. Or at least they are. I am hiding roiling turmoil behind a mask of serene indifference. They take a deep whiff of the crisp air. A contented smile plays on their lips. "It's a nice morning," they say. A small shudder of anxiety rattles my insides. "It really is." I could make it last longer. An eternity. Our whole lives. I could take their hand and slow everything down. We could walk through the city and no one would see us, just an occasional blur whipping past them. I could slow it down entirely until time itself seemed to stop and we could spend an entire day together in a matter of moments. I could take their hand and terrify them with the unknown, reveal myself as an unknown betrayer, a keeper of secrets, a liar by omission. With a touch and thought, I could show them something about me that could explain so much. Something that the fear stewing in me tell me could cost our friendship. "So, what do you have going on today?" they ask. They've turned back toward me, brushing small circles around the holes of the metal table secured to the patio fence with plastic-coated aircraft cable. A waiter stops by to check on us and we both lookup and smile and say great, thank you. Sitting in my car, listening to one of many stolen radios for a public emergency to respond to, I think. "Not sure," I say instead. They give me a long, expectant look. They've locked their gold and green eyes with mine and take a sip of their coffee. "Something is bothering you," they say. Fuck. "Yeah," I say. I try to find something else to look at, besides their intense, lovely, probing gaze. They reach across the table and touch my arm. Their warm fingers feel like soft electrodes, and a shiver of delight passes through the nerves on my forearm out to my whole body. Breathe deep. I slide my arm down until their fingers are on my hand, and as I look up at them I rest my other hand on top. "I'm gay," I say. Time stops as I say it, my powers flexing and expanding outward from me as a feeling of release overcomes me. A version of me, dark and faceless, untethers himself and expands, dissolving until he's become part of the bubble that slows spilling drops of mimosa, the flapping of wings, the harried pace of shoes on concrete. They smile placing their other hand on top of mine. "I'm gay," I say again, tears filling my eyes, "I'm gay," they squeeze my hands tears filling their eyes now, "I'm gay," I'm practically shouting it now, and I keep saying it and we stand up, both crying and laughing and it goes on for who knows how long because what does time mean in a moment frozen? "I'm gay," I say, taking another deep breath and guiding us back down to to our seats, "and I love you." They smile gently, grabbing of my hands in theirs and kissing them each in turn. As I begin to relax, coming down off the cocktail of neurotransmitters and hormones that has me riding high, time gradually resumes its normal pace. A woman next to us shakes her head, no doubt confused by how our hands seemed to move from one position to another faster than she could blink. They pick up a napkin and gently wipe the moisture under my eyes, and under my nose and I laugh as I swat their hand away and take it in mine again as I do. They open their mouth as if to speak, close it, squeeze my hands tight with another small smile, and then pull their hands away, wiping away tears as they do. I can see them struggling to say something now, though I think I know what it is and it hurts a little, but it's fine. I shake my head, put my finger to my lips. They smile and their shoulders drop, settling back into their seat. I take a sip of coffee, and they take a bite of bagel, and the two of us sit in contented silence watching the light dance on the sidewalk to the white noise beat of the waking city.

it's better to have loved and lost, than to never have loved at all, you say you, i say, have never loved enough to be shattered into a thousand tiny feeling pieces like a carpet of broken teeth in a cold wind

your words betray your unfeeling loneliness

It's been almost a year since she died, and yet I can still hear the Great British Baking Show playing softly on the TV inside. I open the door, and a her-shaped depression in the couch vanishes, the dog somehow falling confused back to the cushions as though something lifted and dropped her. I actually don't remember when she died, exactly. I never really had a chance to process her passing because almost as soon as she died her ghost was there, hidden inside my shadow. Not to mention that her death fell so close to so many important dates that I also screwed up constantly, so time got all mixed up in my head. Caught in a whirlpool of grief and once I found myself on shore there was such thorough destruction nothing was recognizable. Just the debris of some vessel I'd once sailed through life on, first mate lost, no mast in sight. A scrap of wood, a slide of brass. Fabric.

I have the impulse to say something, but I stop myself. She isn't there. Not really. I turn the TV off and sit down on the couch. I grab the dog and scratch her ears and she sleepily lays her head on my thigh. There is wine nearby. White. I drink it straight from the bottle thoughtfully, popping the cork out with my teeth and dropping it on the floor. I turn the TV back on and change it to Bob's Burgers.

When she was alive she watched me watch Futurama too many times. Maybe in death she'd prefer something new. I imagine being trapped between worlds comes with a lot of boredom. Playing through the same old scenarios, the same motions, dictums of behavior governed by the cycle of sun and moon. That's something that I've learned about ghosts. It's mostly a behaviorist's game. There doesn't seem to be a ton of thinking going on, just a lot of doing the same things over and over again at fairly predictable intervals. Then again, that is largely what life consists of. We're all governed by our own timestamps. Funny how in death those timestamps get stuck on loop, like the little things we enjoy suddenly become our lives.

Every couple of days or so I find used teabags in the kitchen. All the days in between there is a wine glass that smells of sauvignon blanc even though the inside is dry. Somehow every morning and every night the door opens and I can hear the faint clink of a dog leash. If I leave my computer in my room for long enough then I can walk in and see the last flash of a yoga youtube channel on the screen. Clean clothes folded but not the way I like. Old poems freshly written left on the coffee table. Pedicure tools by the couch. An extra jacket hanging from the coat rack. A book left out under the umbrella in the back. On Halloween I find fake spider webs. On Christmas the living room smells like pine. But these are all the familiar things. Things that remind me that she is still here. Somewhere. Is it her doing the reminding? These are metaphysics that I don't understand.

The reality is that she is not here. She isn't there for me when I get home, with that always-smile on her face. She isn't there to get excited for me when something new happens. Not there to tell me about her day and listen to me talk about mine. Not there to get mad at me for leaving my shit everywhere or listen to me play music. Not there to tell me that things will be okay even when I fuck them up so badly I feel unforgivable. She isn't writing any new poems or making any new watercolors, no new sketches, no new skills, no talking about new things. She isn't there feeling things so deeply that hearing her talk about them makes me feel them too. She isn't crying because that's just what happens sometimes. She doesn't wake me up from my nightmares when they get too strong, or pull me in afterwards and kiss my neck or ask me what happened. She doesn't remind me that it was just a dream. Because she isn't there.

All that's left of her is this ghost that drifts in and out of my peripheral vision. There one moment and gone the next. There doing all of the things that seem normal, and none of the things that I remember loving about her in life. I go into the kitchen, and put the wine glass in the dishwasher. I'll probably find a pair of her dirty underwear in the hamper, even though all of her shit has been well and good purged from the house for weeks.

I have thought about getting a Oujia board. My friends tell me that's a bad move. Well some of my friends do. Let it be, they tell me. You keep trying to make a connection and you'll invite in something you don't want. Something you don't understand. As though the fact that an actual spectral being haunting me and all my shit isn't a known fact. What else could there be? A demon? I mean at this point probably but seriously who the fuck cares if that happens, the more the merrier. Have you seen a horror movie in which the ghost actually gets exorcised? Me neither. So fuck it, let's get weird.

Weird thing about ghosts: they don't actually communicate. They just kind of, repeat the same stuff. It's like they are albums in some kind of supernatural music streaming app, and the things they say and do are on shuffle/repeat, ad infinitum. The Ghost Adventurers would know that if they hung out in the same place for long enough. My spirit boxes are broken records at this point. I used to be so excited, when they would spit out something that she would say often. Little catch phrases, you might say. And I'd wander around her office or our bedroom trying to ask questions and more catch phrases would pop out and I'd think 'holy shit we're communicating!' Turns out no, just more of the memory of her that won't go away. On repeat.

So I have this Ouija board. And I'm thinking: what the hell, maybe it is her. A hypothesis worth testing. So I pour myself some wine and I set up the board, and I put my hand on the game piece with one finger and take a deep breath. I think maybe if she's around then she can put her hand on the other piece and I can ask questions or she can just talk. If she is her, then she hasn't spoken to anyone in a long time and I bet she has got some shit to say. I take a sip of wine. And then another. And then it's half and hour later and I'm pouring my 3rd glass. My head is fuzzy, resting against the edge of the couch, and I can't believe my hand is still on the play piece and suddenly I feel it jolt and I snap my head up and I spill my wine everywhere.

There she is. She is her. What the fuck.

She doesn't move the play piece. She just smiles and takes my hand. She's wearing a black sweater and yellow plaid skirt, tights and boots, that red 24 hour lipstick she likes. Single shade of gold eyeshadow and eyeliner done just so. We walk together out the door and down the street to an old friend's house. Or I should say, an old friend of my brother's. He welcomes us inside, Hi! You two wanna check out the maze?

The two of us look at each other, excited quizzical looks matched. Hell yeah, we say and we're led down a short corridor with big tall windows and white flashing lightning outside. We go into the maze room and it is dark, there is a spotlight that shows where the exit is and the two of us go down into the labyrinth only to find ourselves chest deep in dark, cold water. We feel our way around for a few minutes and eventually decide it isn't worth it, exiting the maze and exploring the rest of the house which is covered in cats, nesting and breeding in the planters and drinking fetid water. As we leave, the old friend says good bye and closes the door and suddenly a very important part of my brain wakes up and I think, fuck. I'm dreaming.

I tell her, If their house is this fucked up when I wake up I need to call Animal Control. I can't remember whether or not we're still friends in the waking life. I look up as though the answers are there, above the clouds overhead that obscure my waking memories from my sleeping ones. She says, why wouldn't you? I say, Well I don't want to cause any drama and, (not actively realizing that dream-friend is not real-life-friend and won't actually remember my visit), he might think that when Animal Control gets there that I was the one who called and that might strain his and my brother's relationship. Clearly, lucid dreaming is not the same as being lucid. I can call when we wake up, if you think that would help, she says.

I take a deep breath. Maybe my body does too, it's a very, very deep breath. Because this is the moment that I realize something very important. No, you can't, I say. Why? Because when I wake up you won't be there. You aren't there now. What do you mean? she asks. I sigh. You aren't actually you. You aren't real. You're my idea of you, all of the bits and pieces of you cobbled together from all the corners of my mind. You're the you that I remember, who is kind and supportive and still there. Well, she asks, where am I then? Gone, I say. You left. I want to tell her that she died, but somehow that seems harsh. Can you imagine being told you are literally a figment of someone's imagination? Probably a lot to take in on its own. What the fuck, why did I do that? Anger. Unexpected. Well...uh, I guess it's hard to say. I don't really know if you had much choice. Well that seems stupid. To me, anyway, she says. And this makes sense. I mean she is me after all. She is my grief, manifested by my incredibly precise and cruel subconscious as the person being grieved for. She grabs my hand, gives the back of it a light kiss, squeezes it. She smiles with her lips and when she turns away we start walking down the street.

I am still dreaming, and I can't remember the last time I felt this light. This normal, this...happy. Not like a flash of happy, not the burn of happy in your chest like a shot of whisky. Contented, at peace. The good happy. The best one. The one that only comes around every once in a while, the kind you forget to acknowledge is fleeting, especially when you feel it for a long time. The kind you remember most when it's gone.

She starts walking faster. I know that if I don't keep up my mind will have to keep cooking up more images. More houses and bushes and flowers, each one accelerating the inevitable end of this simple dream of being with the person I loved more than anyone I've known has loved anyone else. But she keeps walking, and I'd rather keep up than let her leave me behind again.

I chase her down the street. She is always one pace ahead of me. Round this corner, and the next and the next. The street narrows, probably because my mind is losing its grip. I can feel the mist between waking and dreaming seeping in. The clouds darken, the air moistens.

Finally, we turn a corner and there is a little cantina. It looks like the places we went to on the islands in Thailand but somehow this is clearly a mexican restaurant. We get a table around the back, outside, past a locked chain-link fence. All of the tables are some hodge podge of furniture from different eras, moldering in the elements. There is a TV from what might be the 50s but it isn't on and the pristine teal case sits at a contrast to the disgusting yellow couch we're on. What would you like to drink? the server asks. I can feel the veil lifting. I sigh again. I know what is coming. Something that will wake me up, I say.

I look at the dream-ghost of her I've concocted. Her face is getting muddy, like an impressionist painting. I rest my head in her lap. I miss you, I say. I feel her hand on my head. I know, she says.

I wake up, crying, as I have done a couple times a month since she died. All of those moments that I realized her ghost was not her and I was alone. I curl up and weep, let the cry take its course. There is wine everywhere, the glass is on the floor unbroken. The wave of tears passes. I look at the Ouija board and see where the game piece has moved to.

"Good Bye."

Always the god dam man in the closet. Sometimes no eyes, no face, no nose, always waiting in the closet. Always with a smile. The way the kid described him the ear to ear grin was something out of a Stephen King novel. Something mundane and horrifying and otherworldly all at once, like a lamppost that eats children or a notebook that brings your dreams to life. But this is real life, and when a child tells you there is a man waiting for them in the closet you have to check.

I walk into his bedroom and he is behind me, gripping my leg with strong, tiny fingers. The touch sensitive duck lamp strobes with the failings of batteries that should be younger than they behave. A striking juxtaposition to my desires for the terrified child behind me, slinking into my room with whimpers and dragging me out of bed. I debate for a moment about taking down the anime posters taped to the dark blue walls. None of them are particularly scary, but a blank wall excites less in the imagination than dragons and kids in school uniforms with super powers flying through a hail of bullets with a swords. In the spirit of contrast, however, their eyes are enormous in true anime fashion. Not exactly our well dressed demonic butler opening closet doors with fingers blackened and blued by death.

“He’s in there,” he says. I restrain a sigh. “Alright dude, get in bed.” He doesn’t move. “He’s IN there.” “There’s no one in there, I promise.” “You’ll check?” “Of course I will, what kind of demon slayer would I be if I didn’t?” This seems to help him a bit, though he’s still skeptical of my demon slaying abilities. I’ve apparently failed too many times recently, which if any of this were true would be accurate. “What do we need to do to protect ourselves?” “Get in bed and cover our head with our blankets,” he says. “That’s right.” I lift him up so he is sitting on the edge of the bed. “And why is that?” “Because they can’t get through blankets, they’re like force fields.” “You got it. Okay get under the covers and I’ll take care of the closet man.”

He reluctantly complies, putting his whole body under the faded yellow blanket. His little face barely peeks out through a whole he’s bunched up on the side facing the closet. “Are you sure you want to see this?” I ask. He nods. I pat the bundle gently and stand up. I take in the kid’s bedroom slowly, not waiting too long but savoring this little moment between two important elements of parenthood: putting them to bed, and convincing them monsters aren’t real.

The wind blows outside in a single swift gust. The closet door creaks. Every muscle in my body that I can’t prevent from reacting tightens. The yellow bundle on the bed shudders.

This is the moment that I laugh at myself with silent, desperate purpose. Superstitions from childhood persevere throughout our lives, of course they do. Concentrated bouts of fear can’t just be undone. A life free of external trauma does nothing to keep the mind from making victims of us all. We create things of fear, and for what? Some regulatory function of the brain that needs crisis and so creates it if it isn’t provided externally? Thoughts like this only do so much to alleviate such a primal emotion.

Now, for both of us, there is a man in the closet with no eyes. Hands pressed against the doors to feel any vibrations in the room, black tongue licking at the crack to sense our fear, crouching like a mantis in his tailed tuxedo stained black at the neck and cuffs from the effluence of decay. He is waiting for me to open the door, waiting so he can grab my shoulders and plunge his thick cold tongue down my throat, siphon my stomach acid, pierce the wall and clutch my heart. My eyes roll back into my head in shock and the soul devouring pain that only a demon or poltergeist could inflict. My child will scream and hide under his covers, the creature dropping me dead on the floor with a flaccid thud. Somehow my skin and eyes will show signs of death far longer than what is true. When detectives arrive they’ll hold handkerchiefs to their mouths and mutter how they’ve never seen anything like this before. But before that, the child will pull the blanket around them so tight their back and legs will cramp and they will sob quietly and pray. I want to believe they will be spared, their incoherent ramblings written off by child psychologists as drivel, PTSD fueled nightmares, repressions of the truth that perhaps I’m a drunk and an addict and was likely to kill myself with my habits. A miracle I made it this far. They will be haunted by this entity for the rest of their lives, whether real or not, in their dreams, in their homes, with all of their partners. They will have kids of their own and one day those kids will say, “I don’t want to go bed, the man with no eyes is waiting for me in the closet,” and their blood will run cold in their veins as they decide between leaving their home and the fate that befell me that one fateful night.

These are the thoughts that inhabit a feeling, one that flashes through my body in an instant and lingers quivering under my skin. I breathe in through my nose as quietly as I can, and step toward the closet door.

I open it to nothing. Of course. Demons aren’t real. Thank god, they aren’t fucking real.

I kiss my child on the head, say whatever I need to in a comforting murmur, and leave them with the light on and their little peephole ever vigilant on the closet. Down the hallway to my room, turning lights on the whole way and leaving them on. At the door to my room I stop, turn again to go downstairs. I check every door and window in the house, check the security system, start back upstairs and check everything again, leaving every light on as I go. Into my room, I close the door, make it halfway to my bed and turn and open the door a crack letting a sliver of light penetrate the darkness. I go to my bed and lie down, listening to the fan oscillate in a soothing whisper. I roll to one side and see my closet, walk-in, dark, door closed. I think of how many creatures of hell could live in there if my child’s tiny closet can only contain one. I get up, walk to the door, open it, get back in bed. Five minutes later I am up again and I turn the light inside on, grabbing an eye mask. I slip it over my eyes back in bed. Five minutes later I slip it off, and stare into the lit closet as I fall asleep.

“Love breaks things. Maybe it’s a stupid thing to say, but it does. When it first happens to you your world shatters into a million glowing splinters, tearing back the veil and making everything feel new all over again. When it ends your world shatters again, but where there was magic before there is blood and tears in the wreckage.” ~Anonymous

I am in the library, watching her choose a book. Her wandering is a coy gait, hands behind her back, swinging her head around every so often so that her long, wavy locks swing past her cheek and I see her immaculately freckled face and glittering, mischievous eyes. We have been perusing the stacks for a good twenty minutes. Normally I’d be shit full of moving so slow, not knowing what we are here for. Who simply wanders into a situation of a thousand choices having no idea what to look for? Who wants to take a risk on reading a terrible book? This game we’re playing is more than just finding a book, though. The rules are clear, written in the tension that keeps us in sight of each other.

We are in the graphic novel section and I am pulling trade paperbacks of superheroes of the shelves, grinning as she rolls her eyes at every suggestion I make. Hard chiseled faces, enormous breasts and disproportionately muscled heroes and heroines. She pulls her mouth tight and glowers at me, and each time there is a little charge of excitement. We enact this ritual through the poetry section, fiction, science and biology, and what the hell are we actually doing here teasing each other with books on Herpetology, Sylvia Plath, Hemingway?

We are back in poetry and she pulls a book gently, looking down at the cover. I can see the light behind her illuminate her irises in profile, see the clear bulb of the lens of her eye and the freckles of brown in the blue-green pools. Her hand touches the cover gently and for the first time she opens the book, flipping through page after page. Reading one or two lines at a time, maybe, and then flipping to another. I stand behind her and look over her shoulder, but I’m not reading the words, just touching them with my eyes and feeling the weight of her hair and warmth of her head against my face. Her cheek pulls toward me slightly, head tilted to expose the skin on her neck, clues to a faint smile. She pretends to ignore me and keeps reading. We stay like this for a few minutes, the library around us is quiet except for the distant sound of book carts squeaking, the beeping of the scanners at circulation, fingers clacking against keyboards, soft murmur of voices.

I kiss her cheek to break the reverie. The game is over, I’m ready for the next one. She closes the book and turns, looks at me, and kisses my cheek in turn. My face heats up and a smile bubbles up. I take her hand and she walks me to the circulation desk where she puts the book on the counter and smiles. The clerk scans the book, glancing up at the two of us through time worn eyes and a thin, warm smile. She stamps the cover, closes it and hands it across the counter. With one finger and a squinted, full-toothed smile she wags it at us in good bye and we wave, walking out to the car and whatever we choose to do with ourselves next.