Ghost Year

I’ve spent the last year as a ghost,
slipping between rooms without a sound,
pressing my hands to walls
that no longer recognize my touch.

I move, but I do not arrive.
I speak, but the words pass through me.
I reach, but everything dissolves
before my fingers can close around it.

I used to know where home was.
It was a door that opened,
a voice that said my name,
a place where the silence didn’t feel
so heavy with absence.

But now—
home is a memory I can’t quite hold,
a flicker of warmth just out of reach,
a feeling I once understood
but no longer trust.

And maybe that’s why I linger here,
hovering at the edges of where I used to be,
waiting to become solid again,
waiting to remember
what it feels like
to stay.

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Returning

I was a ghost once,
untethered, unnamed,
watching my life from the outside,
slipping between places
that never held me for long.

I left because I had to.
Because the past was too heavy,
because my heart was a room on fire
and I didn’t know how to stay
without burning with it.

So I disappeared.
I let the wind take me,
let the silence fill me,
let the years stretch long enough
to forget where I belonged.

But ghosts don’t stay ghosts forever.

One day, the longing turned into something else—
not just absence, but a pull.
Not just escape, but return.

And when I stepped back into the world,
I found that my hands were solid again,
that my voice no longer echoed,
that I was no longer just passing through.

I came back,
not as the person who left,
but as someone who finally knew
what it meant to crave stillness.

~ Mia

 

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About the Author:
Michelle Cuello (Mia) is a writer and artist exploring themes of healing, identity, and emotional depth. Her upcoming books, Ashes Before Dawn and The Air Never Breathed This Heavy, blend poetic storytelling with personal truth, offering reflections for those who ache, heal, and rise.