They say this place is haunted

But I am the only ghost here

I'm so damned tired of being the good boy. I'm tired of being the one who says 'no'. I'm tired of being responsible, of doing what I'm told, of doing what I should.

I'm seventeen years old, and I'm in love. I'm in love with a girl who I see every day, talk to every day, go home with. She sleeps in the next room, right across the hall from me, and sometimes, I lie awake at night, staring at my door as if looking hard enough would make it melt away, let me see her there.

Sometimes I sneak into her room at night, pull out her chair, sit and watch her. Yeah, I know it's creepy. I have no idea what I'd say to her if she woke up and found me there. And I know it's wrong - but it feels so right, and compared to what I want to do, it's nothing. So I tell myself it's okay.

I tell myself that maybe she feels the same way. I make up wild fantasies, where we run away together, hide from the rest of the world. Where she tells me she loves me too.

She's my sister. My little sister, who I'm supposed to protect, to guard. I'm supposed to love her, but not like this. I'm not supposed to want to run my fingers through her hair, to taste her lips, to feel the soft curves of her.

My whole life is a lie. Everyone thinks I'm the good boy, the good son, the good brother. But I look at her, and my hands itch to touch her, my heart aches like it could burst, and I feel like I want to cry from the sheer beauty of her.

Sometimes I go out at night on the balcony, and I look down at the street below, and I think about how easy it would be just to jump, to end this sick, horrible thing that's inside me before I do something to hurt her. But that would hurt her too, and so I'm trapped, lost in this web I've made, unable to move closer, unable to pull away.

I write these thoughts down, sometimes, like I am right now. I've written her love letters, confessions, poems. I've sat for hours in the middle of the night, looking for the perfect words, for some phrase that might make her see how I feel, that might make her see me as something more than just her brother. And I've burned every one of them, broken the ashes, mixed them until they were nothing but black powder, watched them swirl down the drain.

I think more of me has gone down that drain than there is left inside me now. And it doesn't really matter. There's nothing left here but an empty husk. But that's all right, because if she knew what was inside me, she'd hate me. And I couldn't bear that.

So I go on lying, day after day, telling myself that in six more months, I'll be gone, and I won't have to see her every day, won't have to be reminded of what I can never have. And she won't see me, and she'll forget about me.

And then I can die without hurting her.