If you had lived, I would have told you a story when you were older. I had already planned it all out, the way I would wait until you were the perfect age, old enough to understand something about the pain of living but still a child whose dreams could be stirred by imagination.
I would tell you about your invisible twin, the one who had shared your mother’s womb with you for a brief time, who had died not so that you could live, but so you could live better, protected by an invisible voice somewhere between two worlds. Your very own angel-ghost, your nameless and sexless twin who had decided to keep one foot in a world apart from this one. To always watch over you, to be your senses beyond the ones we can explain, to be the spirit we dream about every night but forget upon waking.
I think you might have enjoyed this, if you had lived. I would tell you the story, the secret history up to that point as I imagined it. Then I would stand back and silently watch your face as you made sense of it, as you took the story and made it your own. I would answer your questions truthfully and watch you pick apart the answers and incorporate them into this new dream. It would change and grow within you, and you would feed it back to me in pieces, so together we might understand a little better how the universe works. We would write stories together, with you as the main character and your angel-ghost as your companion, always the warm shadow enveloping you through your every day’s adventures.
But things don’t always work out the way we plan in this life, and perhaps there is even a place where this makes some kind of sense. Maybe you are still a part of the story I’ll tell one day, just in a different role. Maybe you’re the angel-ghost protecting the child who will invent stories with me as we hold hands and walk along the beach, some sunny day years from now.