The ghost of what I might have been haunts me every day, a shadow cast by roads I left and words I failed to say.
It walks beside my waking hours and lingers when I dream, reminding me of distant shores and all that might have been.
It speaks in quiet echoes, in memories half-formed, of younger hopes and grand designs before the spirit stormed.
Yet ghosts are made of yesterdays, of smoke and borrowed light.
They cannot touch the living heart that still survives the night.
So let it keep its whispered tales, its sorrow, and its praise, for I am more than missed turns lost within forgotten days.
And though I'll never meet the soul I once imagined then, perhaps the one I am becoming is worth becoming yet again.