Certainly, you can imagine that souls have no real shape or form. They could be rounded and plush like clouds, or faceted and compact like gems. Maybe they are completely transparent, save for a single point of light. Perhaps it depends on the person they came from, or the next person they will be.

So it isn’t impossible to believe they could stretch for miles. If not all, then maybe parts of them reach out above and below. Long tails like comets, projecting behind them, leaving a path that alters gravity on some small scale. A sighting or a special event sought out in the night sky.

What if that happens while you’re still alive, and your soul is still inside you? Small parts of you, invisible to the eye, reach out without you knowing? To all the wants and desires you never talk about, the dreams you never attained. The people you never see anymore. The loves you can’t get over.

Each silent, auxiliary piece of us would still be us. The most concentrated version of us. With its own whorled structure, like a fingerprint. Its own level of warmth as it passes. A signature scent that wafts in its wake. A custom sound, too, the same way Tesla owners choose a backup warning as a personality trait.

And also, our weaknesses? An inability to calm oneself, a shameful compulsion for self-soothing. Incredible, all-consuming lust that blots out all other brain activity. Insecurity that wraps around the throat like a cold, dead hand. A restlessness that rivals even the most haunted of ghosts.

Your soul is showing, then, like a slip peeking out. It’s completely betraying your best efforts to be cool. But it’s also finding the other souls; the ones who are the same temperature, color, taste. Entangling tails as they sniff each other, get in to the real parts.

And when they do — get all wrapped up like that — there’s no undoing it. It would be easier to untangle a million fine strands of gold chains and pendants.

That’s why it’s so hard to forget them.