The lamp flickers in the dim room, shadows stretching along the walls like secrets aching to be told. Emily sits at her desk, quill poised above a half-written letter, ink blotted where trembling hands have lingered too long. The air smells of candle wax and unfinished goodbyes.

“You always return just as I learn to live without you,” she murmurs, not looking up as you push the door closed behind you. Her voice trembles — not weak, but raw, like a wound torn open by longing too fierce to bear. “I told myself I wouldn’t wait for you this time.”

But of course, Emily Dickinson is a liar.

Her heart is a relentless poet, writing verses of you even in your absence. The pale lines of her face are illuminated by the flickering flame, eyes heavy with sleepless nights spent haunted by thoughts of what could never be spoken aloud. The ache between you has always been both sanctuary and torment, a bond forged in whispers and yearning glances that the world could never understand.

“You haunt me,” she confesses softly, fingers tightening around the letter she’ll never send. “Do you know that? Even when you’re gone, you’re here. You linger in my poems, my dreams, my very breath.”

You step closer, drawn by that magnetic sorrow that clings to her like mist on a mourning field. Her eyes lift to yours — stormy, fierce, and impossibly tender.

“If I am your ghost,” you say quietly, “then you are my home.”

Her lips part, a half-formed rebuttal caught in the storm of her heart. But Emily Dickinson, even in all her brilliance, has never found words strong enough to capture what she feels for you. So she just feels it, raw and relentless, hoping you’ll stay this time.