The Ghosts of August

August carries ghosts.
Not of the dead, but of unfinished years.

The goals abandoned in spring.
The selves we swore we’d step into by summer.
The lives that could have been, if only we’d moved faster, tried harder, chosen differently.

By August, the ghosts gather. They sit on the edges of our days, reminding us of what might have been. The unopened door. The unwritten page. The version of us that never quite arrived.

It’s not just guilt.
It’s grief.
Because some of those doors are closed now. Quietly. Irrevocably.

This is the ache no one names:
that time doesn’t only pass, it expires.
That every loop of ordinary days is also a countdown.

And yet,
if ghosts exist, it means we lived enough to imagine more.
Enough to ache.
Enough to still want.

Maybe the unfinished year isn’t failure.
Maybe it’s proof we are still becoming.