Cat Newton

And Martin told Dan he was going to wear a top hat/ and Amaris told Alexa that she’d be in that knee length dress that has started to remind me of death/ and Reggie told me that he probably wasn’t going to get a suit for the service but that he was getting a haircut to look clean, for Will, and
day of he didn’t show

And I hold his brother outside the Church and he feels just like Will felt/ and I sit in a pew near the back and I hear the priest that never met him talk about his faith and how strong it was/ and I can’t think of a single time I heard Will talk about God and maybe that meant I didn’t know him and  
I wonder what people do with their hands

And we say “we have to stop meeting like this” over passed food/ and smile and look down before moving on to useful things like work and weather and I get another soda I don’t finish/ and I realize I don’t recognize his mom anymore and how last summer we were five and 
now we are three

And I find myself outside gasping in the black dress I bought before he was gone/ and I fumble with a Marlboro light and a lighter I stole from someone’s bag/ and I tell myself that we are each made of so many parts that it’s impossible to know all of anyone and that it’s okay that I’m here and he’s not and 
I realize how much I’ve chosen to forget 

And when his ex-wife called crying I knew right away/ and I remember how at one point I thought I loved him so much I wanted to die/ and she asked about what clothes I thought he should be buried in and whether he’d want to be wearing their wedding band when it was all said and done and
I said yes

Cat Newton

CAT NEWTON is a native New Yorker who studied literary nonfiction at Columbia University School of Journalism. Previously, her work has been featured in A Gathering of the Tribes magazine and Fauxmoir magazine. Cat spends an inordinate amount of time thinking about writing, and sometimes even succeeds in doing it.