Ghosts and Shadows

What happens when you keep passing for human long after the soul goes missing.

Artwork by : Shain Parwiz

They don’t see it.
How could they?

The hands move.
The face holds.
The voice hits the right notes on cue;
well-rehearsed, radio-ready.

“He... I mean, it is functioning.
There’s no need for a version update.”

But inside?
It’s all swirled screams and scorched declarations,
the kind you whisper when you still believe you belong.

---

I don’t live here.
I squat in this skin, just waiting to be evicted.
This isn’t presence. It’s performance.
A tableau going stale.
A soul on lease.
A smile on retainer I can’t afford.

If only.

---

The inside speaks a different language.
No subtitles.
No script.
No translation for this ache.
Just smoke signals and skipped heartbeats,
an SOS from a system glitching toward collapse.

A dead zone in a working body.
No signal. No rescue.
Even if it could transmit,
who would come?

Motion doesn’t mean meaning.
It’s a reflex, trained by a universe
that sneers every time I move.
Heartbeat doesn’t mean hope.
They see the rhythm and assume life.
But ghosts walk with their eyes wide open too.

---

Ghosts don’t float.
They walk between.
They don’t rattle chains — they were born handcuffed.
They sit in chairs you forgot were once warm.
They hum lullabies into silence —
melodies from a childhood that left without notice.

They breathe for you
when you’ve forgotten how.

You call it peace.
They call it pretending.

If only.

---

You see me,
but only the daylight version.
The scripted me.
The house-trained ache.
The “I’m okay” framed in parentheses.

But inside?

I’m haunted by the blades in my back,
and the arrows that made my heart their home.
By the things I couldn’t hold,
not for lack of trying,
but because I was blindfolded,
chasing sand through a sieve.

By what I held too long,
the ones who sprinted away
like it was the last lap of their last race.

By the reverb that answers when no one speaks.
The delay pedal that makes grief sound fuller,
but leaves me empty.

---

The whispers aren’t loud.
They don’t need to be.
They’re invited.
Expected.
A one-way call and response
from a past that still picks up.

They live in the gaps.
In the stretched-out hush of an old tee shirt.
In the breath after the joke doesn’t land.
In the two seconds after the smile drops,
when you remember your whole life has been a pause.

If only.

---

“You weren’t enough.”
“You broke it.”
“It was you.”

That’s the chorus.
Played through pedals and presets.
A playlist curated for the condemned.

I never chose the station.
But the song plays on,
merciless in its repetition.

---

Sometimes I see my reflection and flinch.
Not because it’s cruel,
but because it still looks like it has a life.
One I left behind.

Too whole.
Too wholesome.
Too hold.
Hold.
Holes.

Too practiced.
Over-rehearsed just to pass for human.
Too polished to reveal the bruises beneath.

If the battle left a limp,
a scar,
a burn I couldn’t hide,
maybe then they’d get it.

But no.

The damage is architectural.
Painted over.
Decorated with off-whites and just enough blue
to feel normal.

Hidden beneath pressed shirts
and steady hands.

If only.

---

I pass for normal.
Didn’t excel.
Just made the grade.

I nod,
a broken metronome trying to keep tempo.

I thank them for checking in.
It’s what they expect.

I shake the ghost’s hand,
the one beside me.

From the outside,
I’m just a body miming connection.
A skin sack shaking air.
They think I’m crazy.

And maybe they’re right.
But the flaw?
They still see the skin sack as human.

I’m not okay.
I’m practiced.

There’s a difference.

---

If only.

---

You ever wear silence like a suit?
Drag your own bones
just to prove they still weigh something?

That’s me.
That’s this.

If only.

---

And the worst part?

The whispers aren’t wrong.
They know my voice.
They have the receipts.
Date. Time. Line for line.

They quote me back to myself
like lawyers in a trial I didn’t know I was losing.

Hope is for the living, they say.
And I stood there, pro se,
arguing against a past
that brought its entire team.

Sentence handed even before I could present my defence.

If only.

---

I am the ghost.
I am the shadow.
I am the outline
and the torture that comes after.

Finally finding embrace,
in nothingness.

Noticing.
Noting.

Nothing.

If only.

Author’s Note:

I don’t remember when the performance began.
Just that it never stopped.It was evident when I read through my journals. So this is a mix of selected fragments from 5 years of me vomiting and bleeding on those pages.
This one’s for anyone who’s been applauded for surviving when what they needed was someone to look closer.
If you're walking through your own ghost story —
This is company, not closure.

-Shain