Dear Ghosting

Dear Ghosting,

Tonight, people will dress up as ghosts. Tomorrow, most of them will have the decency to stop.

You have made a year-round career of disappearing, usually after sex, occasionally after meeting the family, and always after a speech about how much you value communication.

For a while, we worried something had happened to you. Then your dating profile changed to “looking for something real”, using a photograph we took.

You are allowed to lose interest. You are even allowed to say the sex was disappointing; we have notes of our own. Dear John opens for breakups tomorrow. If you can write six paragraphs about what you want in bed, you can approve three sentences saying goodbye.

Yours in breakups, with our notice period served,

Dear John