This Thing Between Us

by Gus Moreno

It occurred to me that I couldn’t go back to crying because I had to pee, which who knew peeing could outrank grief in the brain.

People cannot bear to think there are channels of human experience that are closed off to them, that they’ll never know. People want to believe their experience is universal, that nothing’s outside their scope.

Without knowing your love of amortization calendars and kettlebells and the burned cheese parts sticking out of the end of a quesadilla.

Nurses visited the room and flexed your limbs, because the hours and days in bed were crushing you. Your body would start to curl into itself, like some invisible force crumpling you into a paper ball.

I smiled and said something about how reassuring that was, but inside I was ripping the wallpaper off my skull.

Our presence in the living room, though, made the first floor feel soft, the corners of the rooms rounded off. Upstairs, the shadows still clung to the corners like cobwebs, like the dark was the same as heat, rising to the top. At night the rooms felt sharp, lifeless, and if they were filled with anything it was that invisible hostility a person felt in their room after waking up from a bad dream.

See you in the spring, poop.

My head hurt. I was tired of getting money in exchange for loved ones.

In grade school an older kid told us a story about a spoiled boy who never listened to his elders. One day he showed his mom a single white hair growing out of his stomach, and she told him not to pull it, but he didn’t listen and pulled, and what it ended up being was a very important nerve, and all at once he went blind and pissed himself and lost all control of his body. That’s what writhing on the floor felt like. I was undone.

The second said a visiting spirit is compelled to count any spills you purposely make, taking it as a challenge, except since they lack a body they can’t move the grains they’ve counted and will inevitably lose count enough times that the frustration will force them to leave. Which I guess meant even in death there was still forgetfulness, OCD, frustration. Passing away didn’t alleviate us from the things that made life so tedious to begin with, we were beholden to that shit even in the afterlife. But whatever. I poured the salt.

And it was the idea of talking to you, that the flames would engulf these pages and the words would roll into the smoke and float through the veil and you would be there for it, that helped me figure out a way to get this all out. Down on paper. Thank you. I love you. I’m sorry. Thank you. I love you. I’m sorry. For the things that still need to be written out.