I feel the exact note of what you were dreaming.
What else do you want, what else could you imagine?

Captivate me. You have me, now what will you do?

"This is fragile" you whisper. Now, stop, acting like this is delicate.
You want me to breathe you in and out, now. Are you afraid? Shouldn't you be?

If I had to describe a greatest fear: Thieving Ghosts

The ghosts of this city are gnawing at my bones,
wretched creatures, spiteful and passionless.

They weave their hands, translucent and cold, through my hair, tugging and pulling me towards the ground.

I protest, because I do not like the way the pieces of gum are sticking to my shoes, and imagine it would be less than pleasant to have my hair (dammit, I should have cut it, I always want to cut it)

stuck in the gum.

They laugh at me. I dislike being laughed at. I feel a rumbling nauseousness in the pit of my stomach, aching for them to embrace me, aching for them to simply let me be.

The ghosts taunt me with records, carefully penned, of people who once were loves of mine but have ceased being anything but cruel remnants. "See the evidence!" they gloat.

And I do. I see it. I see the memorabilia, stacked in a corner, dust (insect shells, broken jagged grasshoppers and butterfly wings, dried maple leaves and candle wax)

slick over the top.

Now I feel nothing, and instead of merely stealing my past and disabling me, holding me down to the ground, these ghosts.... ah. They make void my present by weaponizing my future.

They are crafty, wiley things, devoid of kindness.

"See how you feel nothing now?" they taunt. "Nothing for that which you 'loved' with everything, everything?"

"For that which you say you love now--
--You. Will. Feel. Nothing."

As I pen and read the present declarations of feelings, emotions, love and other such things, these ghosts steal from me what is mine in the present by revealing the emptiness and only distant fond affection for what was once

ever so dear.