This Thing Between Us

by Gus Moreno

Dead, they needed to encapsulate you, harness you into a favorite movie they could buy, a favorite motto they could tattoo. No one got that you were those things primarily because you were you, not because they made you.

I had no story to follow. My favorite character was gone.

I’m supposed to move on, get over it, let go. But it’s like having an arm amputated and complaining that you can still feel the phantom hand balled into a fist, and it hurts, and they all stare at me like monks in their Zen gardens, and say, “You have to let go.”

When you died I mourned you, but also the version of myself I was with you. So there were two deaths.

Your parents buried your body and my brain would bury your imprint on my life.

The maddening part of the last few months wasn’t that you were dead, but that you hadn’t been obliterated from the world.