Your boyfriend recently died, succumbing to the flat line of the heart monitor he was tethered to by IV’s and slithering tubes, right when you found his shedding hair a familiar sight. You haven’t been yourself since that day, constantly visiting his grave with an empty lot beside it, fantasizing that free six foot spot for you to rest eternally beside your lover.

You never believed in ghosts, nor have you ever see one, however, on one chilling night unbeknownst to you, while the wind howled and stripped the trees bare of their leaves, as the blades beneath your Converse slotted themselves snug between your soles, you heard your name faintly dance near your ears, so softly it felt clandestine. Whipping your head back, you were greeted with the ghostly figure only visible under the gleam of twilight filing through the twisted branches of trees; yet, he looked so real.

He smiles, the youthful wrinkles crippled by his eyes hiding under his greasy locks, the ones once lost after his untimely death with his beaten hood and ripped jeans.

“Sugar,” he whispers forgo stridency, “I told myself everyday since my passing that I’d do anything to see talk to you again, to hold your hand again, to kiss you even if you weren’t dead.”

He rushes into your accepting arms, his opaque body now stout against your warmth. He cries into your neck, choking out onerous words, “I don’t care if you’re sick, I don’t care if you’re contagious. I’ll kiss you even though you aren’t dead.”