Where Did You Go, My Ghostly Love?

Wish you were here. I would give anything for you to materialize in front of me.

Where did you go, my ghostly love—

the whisper in the hollow of my ribs,

the flickering silhouette behind my eyelids?

You slip through my grasp like silver mist,

always just beyond reach,

always a step into the horizon I cannot follow.

I have spent lifetimes searching for you,

calling your name through forests of dusk and sorrow,

dragging my breathless body up endless spirals of longing—

but just as my fingers graze your phantom skin,

you vanish—

again, again, again—

leaving only the taste of grief on my tongue.

Would you understand, if I carved my devotion into my bones?

If I plucked out my eyes, wove my hair into an offering,

gave my hands, my voice, my breath—

would you stay then?

Would you let me exist beside you,

not as a lover, not as a friend—

but as a shadow at your feet,

a specter curled in the corners of your world?

You haunt me as the moon haunts the tide,

pulling me closer, only to retreat,

leaving me shipwrecked in the dark.

I chase you even in my sleep,

through endless corridors of nothingness,

through forests that whisper your name in the wind,

through staircases spiraling into infinity—

and each time, I reach for you,

each time, you dissolve into the air,

leaving me breathless, screaming,

a lost soul in the night.

You steal the color from my skin—

they say I am too pale,

that the life is draining from me.

But is it you, siphoning my warmth,

drinking the light from my veins

like the dusk swallowing the last gold of the sun?

Or is it simply the weight of this love,

so impossible, so consuming,

that it pulls me under,

crushing my ribs like the jaws of the earth?

Tell me—

you love me, don’t you?

You whisper it in the night,

when the world is asleep,

when only the wind bears witness.

You love me, you do—

then why do you go?

Why do you tear my mind apart,

drive me to the edges of madness,

leave me in the woods, barefoot and breathless,

with nothing but the echo of your absence?

You say you leave because you are not my dream—

as if I could dream of anyone else,

as if my soul had not been carved in the shape of you

since the birth of the stars.

You think I search for something you are not,

but don’t you see?

It is only you.

It has always been you.

I would burn the heavens,

turn the earth to ruin,

if only you would believe me.

I cannot breathe without you.

I cannot move with this agony.

I would step off the edge of the world,

vanish into the void,

become the mist, the wraith, the wind,

if it meant I could find you,

if it meant I could hold you in the hollow of eternity.

But I know how this story ends.

I will always be running,

always dashing up these never-ending stairs,

always reaching for the man I love

only to watch him slip through my fingers—

a mirage of silver and sorrow,

an illusion of love I will never hold.

And still—

I will run to you,

again, again, again,

until I have nothing left to give.

© 2025 Inaba Tarek