Monstrilio

by Gerardo Sámano Córdova

We didn’t so much exist as much as we haunted,

He asked me to cry with him, but his sadness was his and I couldn’t steal it.

To wither is not the same as to break; to break is to have pieces to put back together, and to wither is to dry up, to wilt, to lose bone, to die, and death is the most boring.

She was whole in a way I had forgotten a person could be.

My mother thought I was a monster and didn’t love me because of it. This thing, an actual fucking monster, was loved.

I wade through the shadows of our living room, hoping to find monsters. Chat with them. Laugh. But there are no monsters in these shadows. Only me.