6.3b

If I say she haunts me, you'll forgive my anachronism; I know she isn't dead. But she does haunt. It's the correct word. She has entirely disappeared into the bleak expanse of death, and her ghost only lives with me. She has cast a pall on my mind that is not reflected in the world around me. She has left no material mark on the world I can see, no look-alikes, no doubles, no mental or emotional döppelgangers.
If it weren't for the ring she left on the bedside table, I could have dreamed her—a nightmare that won't fade on waking.

I want to kill what's left of her, climbing to the inside crevices of my beleaguered skull, but they don't make a knife that will exterminate the spirit and leave the flesh intact, or I would be scraping her out already.