I am a ghost. As pale as death. Like the stars, I’m always there, you just can’t see me; because humans are blind in the light they cherish so much. I can see all – I can see you in darkness or light, for I am not blind like the humans that fear me.

Your thoughts and feelings rotate in my mind – a mind as active and adept as your own -‘here comes the ghost again, to haunt me while I lie in bed. Go away, twisted demon! I’m tired of being in fear of you, quivering in my sheets, hoping you will go away.’

The adrenaline pumps through your veins as your nightmares return to you, you lock yourself in your room, waiting for me to come to you through the walls when in fact I am already there, lying beside you peacefully. Sometimes you feel my presence yet still cannot see, fear blinding you.

Why must I be cursed with this gift? If gifts are good then does pleasure equate pain? Is darkness and corruption a healing place? My purpose and goal is not to invoke fear, yet to become one with that which I used to be. To feel compassion, to feel worth.

Feel me - I love to touch you, my hands in yours and feel your flesh and bone; of course I touch, and brush your arm - if I don't touch, I'm alone. I love to listen, answer back and hear the echoes left; of course I listen, speak and hear. If I don't hear, I am deaf. I love to be, and sing, and touch, to laugh and love and give; of course I try to do these things. It's the only way I know I still live.

Yet ‘life’ is something I am not credited with, whether it be the case or not, for your fear of me overrides your susceptibility to read me, hear me, and listen to me. Why, purely for the fact that my mind and body have become separated, am I considered ultimately ‘dead’ when it is the mind which lives on and the mind which feels?

I don’t ask much, just please see the signs. I am not here to hurt, yet it hurts me to see your reaction to me – a spirit once loved, forced out because of a change in physical state – an unavoidable transformation. One which you, too, will endure – you too shall feel my pain in time.

How I long to find a gateway within you, an entrance to your soul through which I can show you I am still the same – I, a spirit, am merely a shadow, one in the same with my former past self yet without a body to prove myself. Does that mean that I am no longer worthy?

I watch you, yes, but without malicious intent; more with the memories, the fondness, and the feeling maintained from when I was ‘alive’. I watch you cry, and I touch you once again, wishing you would embrace me. Don’t be sad that I’m gone, for I am not, I am here – just unlock your heart to me and we will never be apart. I may not be present in body, but in mind I am right here – my spirit flies freely, I am not bound by nature’s laws, yet I cannot fight these innately human feelings.

What is it in your mind that forces you into believing that once a body dies the soul turns bad? That the figure you see in the hall or the signs you see in the stars, the objects mysteriously moved and the lights suddenly switched on are signs of evil involvement and danger? For twisted demon I am not.

The night we parted, I returned to your side, as I promised I would – I didn’t lie. My footsteps unheard, my words unsaid, eyes soft and inviting – living, but dead. I looked down at my hands, stroking your hair as you cried for me, my wish never heard, my heart quiet. I longed to be stronger, to turn back the clock. You lived , dead to silence, I died, dead to all.

That night I heard, but I was deaf, and I saw yet I was blind, not even apparent to your stubborn human mind. I wished you could see me, or just hear one word, but even as I choked back my ghostly tears no sound was made. I had gone, and although you hadn’t lost me, I had lost you. It happened so fast, and now all I stand for is a piece of the past. I only hope that one day the doors will open and the barrier will be broken.

You are never quite there when I feel you the most, though I stand ever watching; your guardian ghost.