Gone with a trace

There is a place inside my brain where I have kept her,

The person I was before all of this came to be,

the person I can never be again.

I dare not utter her name for fear that my new life,

and my new identity will dissolve like a Fata Morgana

in the blinding heat of truth.

She is there inside of me and yet not there,

An echo, a memory, a phantom limb

a ghost.