“Did you ever see me? I mean… Really see me? I don’t think you did. I always caught you looking past me, through me, as though you were looking at someone standing right behind me. I hated you for it and I hated myself for not really hating you. Every time I sat down with you I could feel her hovering around us, stealing you from me. Sometimes I wanted to take the pictures you drew of her and destroy them as though that would make her die again. Even in the pictures you made of me, I could sense her.

Do you remember that time I walked into your room without knocking? I caught you kissing the red lips on her portrait, your hand looked gentler against the painted locks of hair then they ever did when touching me.

I don’t mean you were cruel to me; you were very kind, catering to my whims and never berating me for my selfishness. But you were never really with me, you were chasing her ghost in my features and when you failed to find her in me you drifted away and your eyes looked so cold and distant. Even if it was merely for a fraction of a moment, I always noticed it.

Did you know I thought you were fading away sometimes? As though her ghost was sucking you out of this world. I hated it when you smiled at nothing at all, as though she was speaking to you and I hated how jealous that made me.

Sometimes I really thought you’d forgotten her and that I mattered to you. Do you know how happy I was at those times? But then you’d get that look on your face again and I’d hate you for making me love you and for being unable to love me back in the way that I wanted. Yes, I know you cared for me… but you never loved me.

Do you remember that day in the park? That lovely, late-autumn, day when it was so surprisingly cold and you put your scarf around my neck and put one of my hands in your coat pocket because I was cold. Do you remember how we ate freshly warmed baguettes on the bench in the little garden by the empty fountain? How about the little grey cat that sat next to us? Or when you brushed a leaf from my hair and then kissed me?

Were you happy on that day? I was.

Did you actually see me instead of what could have been if I had been her?

Do you know how hard it is to compete against a ghost? To compete against a saint? In your mind that’s what she was, flawless and perfect in every way. Yet I was the one who slept next to you, did you forget that? It was my head on your arm, my fingers against your skin and my breath on your lips. The triumph I felt over her ghost when I thought of how my skin is warm and soft, whereas hers is no more than ashes and dust, and how my breath mingled with yours, when her breath was long gone.

How many people do you think knows how it feels to live with a ghost?

Hey… do you remember my name? Do you?

I know you don’t.

It’s as if I was the real ghost.”