Boo

Of all the magical creatures floating around people’s minds to fall in love with – the ever-present vampires, werewolves, zombies, even snowmen – the worst of all might very well be a ghost. But that’s what I did, fell in love with a wisp.

I met him in a graveyard wherein I was losing my mind, stalted¹ as I was by endings and deaths when my worst fear waltzed in and to my surprise, instead of taking my breath, did so of another kind.

He hadn’t seen the light of day in ages, ages, and so he would sit with me forever – he wanted to know all about my world. I told him gladly because, as I might have mentioned, I was getting tired of living as Eleanor Rigby.

He may have been cold but his hands warmed my soul and I was overwhelmed by just how much he could be. We talked for hours among absent headstone flowers. Like Dickinson’s death, he knew no haste, but I, I took him everywhere.

Slowly then he made me sane, and I came to see him whenever I needed to ground myself, among the gravestones so too planted in the ground. Cemeteries still chilled me, goosebumps prickling up my arms but I was brave because he was all my favorite men rolled into one – wise and full of fun and sweet as berries.

But slowly then he faded out – the first day I noticed he was just papery-transparent, still mainly opaque, but when I asked him he said he was how he’d always been, in a way that implied that something was wrong. Then in a year, he’d disappeared, and all I ever see are whispers in that cursed cemetery.

My sister had Boo when she was three. Well, it took me till I was eighteen for me to realize mine was imaginary. It’s hard to put into words the feelings of waste when, like the Magnetic Fields said, you realize you’ve been loving air.