The ghosts still find me.

They don’t need directions.
They know where I am.

They find me in dreams,
where the dead are inconveniently alive again,
where I can hear a voice
I haven’t heard in years
and for one glorious, cruel moment
forget that I cannot hear it anymore.

They find me in the car.

A song.
A street.
A passing thought.

And suddenly,
there you are.

No invitation.
No warning.
Just a memory
pulling into the passenger seat
as if you never left.

They find me in the shower, too.

Perhaps because steam
is apparently the preferred medium
for communication with the other side.

I see your name
in the fogged-up glass
and write it with my finger.

Just once.

Hello.

I remember.

Goodbye.

Then the water runs,
the steam disappears,
and so does the name.

But not quite the feeling.

That is the strange thing about ghosts.

They don’t always come to frighten us.

Sometimes they come to ground us.

Sometimes they arrive
when we are moving too fast,
too distracted,
too busy becoming whoever
we are supposed to become next.

They tap us on the shoulder and say:

Remember.

Not to drag us backward.

Just to remind us
that we were there.

That we loved.

That we lost.

That something mattered.

And perhaps every appearance
is another tiny goodbye.

Not the enormous goodbye
we thought we said the first time.

A smaller one.

A quieter one.

The kind we are finally ready to say
because enough time has passed
and enough living has happened
between then and now.

So the ghosts still find me.

In dreams.

In cars.

In showers.

In songs and smells
and ordinary Tuesday afternoons.

They come when they please.

Or perhaps
when they are needed.

And I no longer always ask
why they came.

I let them stay for a moment.

I write their names in the steam.

I remember.

And then, gently,

I let the water wash the names away.

Because sometimes
moving on isn’t forgetting.

Sometimes it is simply
learning how to say goodbye

one more time.