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You watch the clock move the slow hand. I should have been home hours ago, but I'm not here. You sit at the kitchen table we once struggled to carry through the front door and around the tight corner from the living room. That's never going anywhere again, you said when we finally squeezed it in, placing it just where the light from the bay window would fall across its burnished surface and offer the perfect view of the back garden with our meals. And it didn't. But I did.
The light outside that window is pale and tentative now, made gauzy and insubstantial by a veil of morning fog that will be gone before you know it. It backlights her, softening her edges as she brews two cups of tea and places one in front of you. The slight smile on your face as you inhale the scent, letting the steam shroud your face and cloud your features, is all too familiar to me. I wish that I could burn away as easily as the fog outside when the sun comes up, or fade unnoticed like the steam from the tea when it is no longer warm. But I can't. So I stay.
They never found my body when I drowned. Maybe that's why I can't leave - or maybe this happens to everyone who dies, and none of us has figured out how to let the living know it yet. Even so, I was laid to rest as best as they could manage - I should know, since I was there. My loved ones packed the church to the rafters. You gave a beautiful eulogy that also reflected on the impermanence of all things, and only broke down at the end, and it was okay because everyone else was crying by then too. We are of the going water and the gone, we are of water in the holy land of water, you said to the teary-eyed crowd, and like so many other things you said to me I've never forgotten it, even though I never really understood what you meant.
She sat next to you in the pew while you waited to speak, squeezed your hand when the pastor introduced you, handed you a handkerchief and let you cry on her shoulder when you were done. And much later, after the funeral, when the flowers had wilted and the sympathy cards had stopped coming and all the frozen casseroles had been thawed and eaten, she was still at your side. I miss her, you said.
I do too, she replied.
She had been my friend and yours in life, so it was easier to say these things to her, to show the full depth of your grief in front of her after everyone else thought you should be moving on. Let me be weak, you told her, let me sleep.
Of course, she said. Take all the time you need. It was just what you needed to hear - to know that for at least one person, you never had to say goodbye to my part of your life - and I know that she meant it. So it didn't surprise me when you finally invited her into your bed, your home, your life. Who could understand better what you had lost that someone who had lost the same thing? I cared for both of you in life, and in a way, that makes it worse to be here and not-here, watching you without me.
All of this happened years ago, and still I can't let you know what's been happening. I watch you as if under ice, the barrier between us transparent yet impenetrable. I tried so many times to speak to you, my insubstantial lips babbling nonsense in your ear as you lay in bed, wracked with sobs - listen baby listen to me baby help me help me baby talk to me talk to me please talk to me. But you can't hear me. You have no choice but to ignore me. You drift through our home, separate from me, as your life slowly erodes what is left of mine, like waves pulling sand away from the shore.
You've finished your tea, and she takes away both mugs as you put on your shoes and coat. She kisses you before you go, silhouetted in the clear white light that pours through the open front door. And though I stand next to her as she waits at the window, it's her you turn to wave to as you walk down our street. I stay there long after she steps away, watching your form dwindle in the distance. With just one hand held up high, I can blot you out of sight - or I could, were my body not translucent. I still see you leaving me no matter how hard I try to turn my gaze away.
I'm not jealous. Not exactly. I have never wanted anything more than your happiness, and my feelings haven't changed now that your life has moved apart from mine. But I long for the day when I will no longer witness your joy, when oblivion will take me far away from the new life you built without me. I hope that when I go, it will be sudden and silent, leaving no ripples in the smooth surface of your world. You didn't hear me come in. You won't hear me leave.