el muerte

I’ve always hated the phrase being there for someone, but when I held her moments after she stopped breathing, her bones like unfrosted Pocky, I understood how years ago I had gone away from her and how I hadn’t thought again of her waking and sleeping moments, or of the morphine and the nausea it caused her, or of Chucho having to wipe off the tar-like excrement and soap her up and wash her off; I felt like I had never really been there for anyone.