I thought I saw you in a café window today. It was only a split second that your ghost lingered on that dirty glass, like an empty shell. It didn’t take longer than a split second, though, to reanimate you, like I had so many times before: to give you new friends, new hobbies, a new haircut. To make you hate me. It didn’t take much longer than a split second to turn away from that window, dejectedly, because I knew that wasn’t you. You would never hate me like you had, because you just didn’t care anymore.

    Maybe it’s selfish of me to want to be any more than a footnote, but what else could I do? I don’t want you to love me, I am far past that. I don’t even want you to like me. I just wish you would think about me sometimes, like I do when the walls close in around me at night. I have never both hated and loved with such a burning passion. But it’s been a while now, and I’m scared it may last forever. How could you do this to me? How could you set me on fire and leave me to burn with such beautiful disdain?

    Maybe I’ll break the glass next time you haunt me so carelessly. Maybe you’ll appear from out the depths of my heart and tell me again how little you care about the box of cookies I bought you. And maybe I’ll stop fighting with your lingering shadow.