The thing about ghosts is that they're actually a completely real thing. Not in any supernatural sense, but just in the bare fact of human cognition.

Existence and reality are two different things. The sun exists as a dense mass emitting electromagnetic radiation. But the golden hour of sunrise and the warmth it casts don't exist, they are only real. They are real things which only exist in our minds.

Our brains have fantastical contraptions for simulating other people. We evolved to build densely interwoven social connections. We're even better at simulating people than we are physics. It's probably why we anthropomorphize so much.

The rocks don't "want" to fall to the earth. Electron orbitals don't "want" to have interlocking states. It doesn't "hurt" the computer when you give it sips of orange juice. But it's a lot easier to understand when we say it this way.

So, fuck: You knew someone for a decade who no longer exists, but they're still etched into your brain.

When you're mourning someone, you're grappling with a ghost. You're grappling with someone who is real but no longer exists.

You're dealing with every place they were present in your life. That absence doesn't exist, it's not a tangible thing. But it's as real as the sunrise.

"I think they'd like to see this," oops, tee hee, they're dead. "I think they'd know how to fix this." Nope, they don't exist, and the part of them that lives in you can't answer your question. It was never possible to hold on to all of them, even when they were alive.

Mourning is selfish, too. That's okay. If you dedicated ten years to someone who no longer exists, it's okay to mourn those ten years too. If you were hoping for ten more years, and all you got was zero, you're allowed to be miffed at that investment. Sure, it was time well spent, but I thought I'd have liked ten more.

And all of the ghosts that live with you are fragments, splinters, ideas. Dimensions reduced, wave functions collapsed, bits compressed, memories faded. The ghost turns into its own thing. Every year of "what would she have said?" puts distance between now and the years that she was alive. It was never possible to hold on to all of them when they were alive. But you can't even hold on to the memories. Dems the breaks!

And so you sit there looking like an idiot, like someone trying to take all the sand home from a beach in your pockets. It's getting cold, doofus. The sun has set. Your pockets are too small to fit all that sand. And it's leaking everywhere, oh my God, you're getting sand everywhere.

I'm only 30 or so; I only have so many ghosts. As I understand it, I'm at the long tail at the start of the "ghosts bell curve". So, I'm walking home, and leaking sand everywhere. People are very upset.

I stop by a library to shake out my pants. It's summer of 2024. The sixty-something librarian is asking, "Where did all this sand come from?" I look at the large, circular glasses sitting on this exasperated persons face.

Every person is a Matryoshka doll. "No idea," I announce inconspicuously. In doing so, I'm talking to someone who was in their 30s in ~1994. I'm talking to someone who was in their teens in ~1974. I'm talking to someone who was a small child in ~1964.

"You're the only person in here, what the fuck? This is so much sand. Can you at least help me clean it up?" I'm reveling in the humanity of it all. They're talking to someone who was in their teens in ~2014, a small child in ~2004.

"Oops, oh my goodness," I apologize profusely. I help vacuum it up, but the vacuum has never been emptied and instead it instantly nebulizes the sand. Does the library have more vacuum bags? No, it does not.

It's closing time. The library is ruined. This librarian won't even know it when I die. I'm a ghost already, walking through the doors, only to live in their memory as the asshole who brought two pounds of sand into the library.

I'm moved by this. I sit down on my computer and log in to jst pst dot net. "Memories are real," I start typing. "You're a matryoshka doll," I start typing.

I hesitate. Could this be a more cohesive post if I studied poetry? Could I trim some of this post to make it better? Surely meandering does not a good post make.

The ghost is still in my head. I remember what she said about the importance of clarity of message.

"Just post," the site offers a rebuttal. Duh, I can't believe I didn't consider that. I put my mouse over the "Create submission" button, ready to fulfill my sacred duty, and