On the wrong side of his smile.

When it started, he told me he was haunted.

He had ghosts in his mouth, and they made him talk funny. His past would follow him everywhere he would go, change everything he did. I said I didn’t care, that the ghosts wouldn’t get to me. He said we shouldn’t get involved. That maybe his ghosts would come out of his mouth and hurt me. I didn’t listen. I never did. His ghosts made him beautiful. They made him who I would fall in love with.

And we got closer and closer. I would often trace the veins in his wrist, feeling the bone. I would watch him light up under the sun, his skin glow.

I would trace the patterns of his mistakes, connect the dots with his scars. Bask in his beauty. He was beautiful, the ghosts didn’t change that, nor did the fact that he had cut up his body so much. From climbing, from falling, from loving. His scars made him who he was, kept him from forgetting his past. I thought those also harbored ghosts for a while, but then I realized that they simply harbored him, his essence, his memories.

I loved him far before he ever loved me, or even thought of the possibility. I discovered his ghosts, one by one. He tried to keep them carefully hidden, and yet I coaxed them out of him, watched them slip from his lips, as he grew to love me as well. His discovered ghosts brought us together, while the ones he kept hidden tore us apart, from the inside of his mouth out.

One day, I went to go see him. I walked in on him in a fit of rage. He was muttering about his ghosts, tearing apart his room, searching, maybe. Or hiding himself further. He didn’t see me and it wasn't until after that he realized I had seen him at his most vulnerable.

We fought.

He won.

I ran from him, attempting to hide my tears, and failing.

I saw him every day. I watched as his ghosts tore him to pieces, as he began to lose himself more and more. I saw new scars appear, even before the old ones had healed. Some days, I would feel his eyes on me, and turning around, I would catch him, seeing the sorrow which I was trying so hard to disguise.

Days grew into months, and I tried to find someone to love, like I loved him. I couldn’t. They didn’t have ghosts, they were flat. No character. I would run my hands over their arms, over their torso’s, and feel nothing. No scars to trace, no dots to connect. But I tried.

One day, he saw. I was with an other boy. We were in the park. My ghost boy flew into a fit of rage. Screaming. Yelling. Telling me that I was supposed to love him. Love him always. The other boy left faster then you could imagine. Ran from the ghosts. They came pouring out of my boys mouth, faster then he could even control.

I watched as he broke in front of me. As he shattered, began to sob on the dirt of the baseball diamond. I watched as his ghosts began to turn on him. As they began to rip him to shreds for letting them out, for allowing them to escape, to be heard.

I got down on the ground right next to him. I held his head as he shook like a leaf. I felt him shuddering as the ghosts left his body, out of fear, out of relief, out of love.

He started whispering broken apologies, telling me he shouldn’t have let me go. He never should have screamed, or let the ghosts control him like that. I told him it didn’t matter, that I still loved him. That I would always love him.

In the end, it didn’t matter that he had ghosts in his mouth or that they made him talk funny, and when I touched his wrist, it was just as I had remembered it, and the sun lit up the bones beneath it. And it ended, with a black haired boy crying into an open palm.

And now? He still has ghosts. But I’m not mad at them. They’ll always be on the wrong side of his smile.