Ghosts

CONTENT WARNING: use of a homophobic slur

At 12, I have my first kiss. 

It was a warm summer night. I remember it clearly: we’d spent the day running barefoot in the grass, and my mom had yelled at us as we tracked dirt into the house. We’d giggled as we hid in the closet while your mom came to pick you up. Somehow, I’d known that was the last time I’d see you. And I don’t know what came over me, but in that moment I realized the prepubescent meaning of love. 

At 14, I cut my hair. 

I stared into the stranger in the mirror as blackened leaves fluttered down into the sink, telling of the winter that was coming. No, not a stranger. Pale like a corpse and dead like peace, the dark strands had been hiding my true face all along. 

On the same day, I tell my mom. 

She smiled sadly, chuckling a bit as she shook her head. 

“It’ll grow out.”

At 16, I tell my dad. 

We both knew what he was thinking, but he wouldn’t say it:

“Faggot”

and he looked at me with eyes I’d never seen before, ones that look at a stranger’s.

“What did you do to my daughter?” 

And I want to tell him that she never existed. That she is a figment, a shadow. That I was never his child, daughter or son. That now, I am the ghost.

At 17, I die.

by HANNAH OH