This Thing Between Us

by Gus Moreno

They were so quick to define you, to pin you down to something. Who didn’t like music? What dead person didn’t have a great smile? A great laugh? No one was calling you these things when you were alive. Alive, you got to be just you. 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.

But we still worked together somehow, like two different animals that learned to hunt as a team. You were you and I was me and there was this thing between us.