Nothing is stagnant, even if you leave it behind. The house will get sold, likely renovated. The street might see a new development. The road will see new cars. The train tracks you recklessly rode your bike alongside will disappear underneath moss and weeds. You will watch your sister fill boxes with your worn-out band t-shirts and all the books you never read and all the books you did. Eventually, the room will be made empty for someone new. And so you must stay. Are those the rules? You died here so this is your forever home? The unspoken ghost rule, you suppose. You’re made to watch the change. The only certainty: endless change. Every moment, new.

God no, you think. I can’t stay here. I’m already bored and it’s only been… Only you’ve no idea how long it’s been. Time isn’t something you can quite grasp anymore. Was it ever? You’ve no heartbeat to steady yourself to. No breath to count to ten with. There is no before or after, only now. And so you must stay. Watch silently as she packs the books. That one was a Christmas present, you protest to no one, it’s got a note written on the first page from your ex-girlfriend. But that was then and this is now. In the box it goes. Someone else will read and enjoy it someday, you hope. Though you never even read it yourself.

Most of you don’t resist quite this much. Most settle quietly into a dusty corner, locking into a cold spot to watch the great change. A quiet acceptance that this is what comes next. But you think you’re different, don’t you? That you can challenge how it’s always been. Since the world and time began and things died and spirits walked and watched and stayed no matter what you or I or anyone tried to do differently. Sure, let’s say you’re special, why the hell not? It’s not like you’re the first to think so.

She’s taping the last box in the room now, your sister. You don’t feel much, though this surprises you. It’s just stuff. She can recycle the old school books and revision notes but you still went to school. And she still walked you to the bus stop every morning before your exams, quizzing you on the way with flashcards you had scrawled on with your barely legible handwriting. It’s a miracle she could read them at all. You smile at the memory of her serious frowning face trying so hard to do so.

In the kitchen now. Not sure how you got here, though – you don’t remember phasing through any walls or ceilings. You wonder if travel is more instantaneous rather than a floating spectral thing like you had assumed. Then you realise that you’re not even sure what you look like. You don’t show up in any of the mirrors within the house. Perhaps you’re slightly translucent. Are you wearing the clothes you died in, some generic ‘you’ uniform, or any clothes at all? Do you look like a white-domed legless thing? No one could tell you, I’m afraid. You suppose it’s more likely that you don’t look like anything at all. Nothing to see here. Move along.

The kitchen is gloomy. It’s raining outside and this room always had the least light of any room in the house. Your mother sits alone at the small oval-shaped dining table in the middle of the room. A too-small off-white crochet table cloth only just covers the various stains and marks from your careless colouring as a child. Wow, the table has been in this house even longer than I have, you think. Your mother is thinking the exact same. And so you must stay.

She sits with her hands flat facing down, looking ahead at nothing in particular, but looking particularly sad. You’re unsure how long you’ve been here at this point. ‘Here’ as in ghostly, I suspect you mean. It could be the funeral tomorrow, or it could well have already happened. You wonder if you could go back up to your bedroom, unpack that book from your ex – was her name Vanessa? Is that already gone? – and perhaps finally read it if you’re really stuck here. Is ‘stuck’ the right word? You ask no one. Would you want to be anywhere else? Do you really want to walk away from your mother, alone at the dining table tracing the faint lines of your name that you etched into the wood with the compass from maths class? She shouted at you, yes. But don’t you know now that it’s her favourite part of the house?

Back to the bedroom. No memory of making your way here, but you’ll get used to it. Your sister has left – off to procure more cardboard boxes. You reach for the sealed one by the end of the bed, thinking that ‘poltergeist’ was never a word you’d anticipated ascribing to yourself. The book from Vanessa was Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. You cringe at the irony, letting a half-hearted laugh slip. She loved the movie with Keira Knightley – always wanted you to grow out your hair like Andrew Garfield –and to read the book together. There is no time like the present, and there is no time. Now you’re getting it.

Through the window you spy on the garden below, overgrown and unkempt, a South London tropical jungle. That was dad’s job to manage, then it was yours, now it is no one’s. You roll out the dusty lawnmower from inside the shed, leaving it in front of the back door; a message from the beyond for your sister. Sort it out for mum, please – you untangle the long difficult cord for her in advance – I love you. And so you must stay, because where else would you want to be?

3

I walk him to the bus stop. It’s the opposite direction of where I am headed, but it’s an excuse to spend more time with him so who cares. We stand facing one another, our hands lightly touching, barely inches between us. He has one eye on the road and one on me. I rest my chin on his chest to stare up at him, and he moves his hands around my waist under my coat.

“Love you,” he says.
“Love you too.”
But it’s not enough. I need him to understand that it’s more.
“You deserve the world.” I pause. “I’ll give it to you somehow.”
And I mean it. I want to give him everything. I want to scoop out all of myself; my past, my present, my future. I want to hand it all over for him to keep. He can have it all.

I’ll give it to you somehow. He tells me it’s the most romantic thing he’s ever heard.

4

Sometimes I wonder if I got it all wrong. I don’t think love is supposed to be this easy. Not that it’s not hard to love him sometimes, or that I don’t feel insecure or paranoid that he doesn’t love me (I feel this all the time if I’m being completely truthful). But where is our conflict, our hardship? Where is the fight for it all? The yearning? Have I earned this yet? Have I been through enough? I think about how we met, and how it all fit into place so easily, and then I remember it’s simply new territory for me. To be loved.

5

“I can see a little blackhead on your butt. Can I get it?”

I look up, startled, convinced I misheard him.

He is lying next to me, on his side in his black Calvins, looking at my exposed backside and then back at me with a sly smile. “What?” I exclaim, embarrassed and turning a bright shade of red. “You want to squeeze a blackhead on my bum? But you’ll be so… up close.”

He interjects swiftly. “Um, I’ve been up close with your bum before Mill.” My face must look like a tomato by now. “But it’s okay,” he adds. “It’s cool, I don’t have to.”

Great. Now I feel I’m letting him down if I don’t let him squeeze the blackhead sitting on my ass cheek. I lie on my stomach, as though for a massage (I wish), and sigh. “Okay go for it, but don’t judge me.”

He seems startled by this addition, and I startle myself a little too.

“Why would I judge you? That’s dumb,” he says, and proceeds to excitedly move down the bed toward his target. He’s right, though. My boyfriend - who loves me and who I am literally lying naked with right now - is obviously not going to judge the spots on my body. I’m saddened by my own immediate reaction to this as he has his fun. If anything, it’s a beautifully intimate moment, and I’ve never felt this close to anyone before. Lying with him at my most vulnerable, every part of me on show and unprotected, is the safest I’ve ever felt. I’m completely comfortable. I hope he is too.

He returns to the head of the bed, waving his index finger in triumph.

“I got it,” he smiles. “Look at that!” 

I can’t see anything, but I’m happy he’s happy. I pull him on top of me for a kiss.

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1

Everything feels okay when he’s holding me. The world stops spinning, it all just slows down. Not quite to a standstill, but to a very soothing pace, like you’re in a quiet train carriage at night. Everyone is asleep, reading a book, or listening to music through their headphones. All living their own little movie. The countryside - now a deep ocean blue and lit occasionally by a streetlamp or someone’s house - is scrolling along the window beside you. Where you came from doesn’t matter, and neither does where you’re going; you’re in the space between. A space that feels safe. Time hardly moves, and yet it moves too fast. When he’s holding me, I don’t think about anything else.

His fingers brush my arm, so light and gentle that I get goosebumps. He’s looking at me and I want nothing but to dive into his blue-grey eyes and drown. I wouldn’t mind drowning in him. I’m already drowning in thoughts of him. He reaches his arm around me pulling me closer, kissing my forehead and sighing contently. I nestle my head into his neck and entangle my legs with his, getting as close as I possibly can. It’s never close enough but it’s okay; I’m back on my train to nowhere.

2

I know love exists, I have seen the movies. I spent most Sunday afternoons growing up watching trashy romances with mum; “if you’re a bird, I’m a bird” and all that stuff. But I know my place. All my life I’ve known that I was not that girl.

There’s something about always being the best friend of ‘that girl’, the ‘other one’, the one who is asked out on a dare. It’s a feeling that burrows deep under your skin. It goes layer by layer as you grow up and impacts every relationship and your entire perception of yourself. I finally grew into my own in college, I began to see my worth and so did others - but I still couldn’t let myself be liked romantically. It was as though I had cast an unbreakable protection spell on myself. I would be repulsed the second a crush showed any sort of interest or affection toward me, as though that proved some lack of intelligence or common sense: they like me? Are they crazy? My insecurities have destroyed so many of my chances.

I know love exists, I just didn’t think it was something that existed for me. Then I met him. It was all so easy, it felt like falling under a wave - I just let the water take me. But he loves me. And I’m not scared. Instead, I’m in this almost constant state of overwhelm. It’s like I’m buzzing all of the time because I just can’t believe it’s real. It feels impossible to be still, to be calm, because I’m overflowing with love for him. How does anyone function like this? Is this what I had been missing?

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