Many people in my life have been consumed by fiction. Fiction is a monster. Fiction is a glutton. Like ego, like an insatiable wrath, it never gets enough, is never satisfied. Fiction has consumed and absorbed many people in my life, many realities. There have been many casualties.

Once people pass into fiction, dream, memory, I am left with ghosts. I am left with spectral imprints. I have loved too many ghosts. I have spent so much time and energy loving ghosts. I have had relationships with many different ghosts. Or maybe it’s the same ghost, with cosmetic variations. Hard to say.

When reality slips into unreality, you lose Love’s warm vital touch. There is nothing quite like Love’s warm vital touch. It is quite human, quite humanizing. When you fall in love with unreality, when you spend a lot of time and energy relating to and loving ghosts, you yourself become a ghost. You become a ghost haunting your own life. I wonder what it would feel like to not haunt my own life? To love the reality of another person. To honor and nourish Love’s warm vital touch, the livingness of Love’s touch. I wonder.