I met Grief at your funeral. He was wearing a T-shirt, jeans, and flip-flops in January, smoking a joint in the corner; he put it out just as the funeral director rushed over. Goddamn, Grief was sexy, brooding in that corner, not crying, just being himself without apology. I knew he would be in my bed that night. We got drunk and stayed up late crying, reminiscing about you, fucking, laughing, holding each other’s hair back while we puked. We slept for a while, fucked some more, smoked cigarettes on the porch, and ate leftover pizza. I thought it would be a one-night stand, but now Grief knew where I lived. He started showing up at my door in the evenings, and sometimes first thing in the morning, too. He begged me to stay home from work. He wanted us to scream from a rooftop, cry together in public, break bottles in the street. We drank all the whiskey in Portland, yelled at no one in particular, made out with strangers, tripped and fell countless times on the way home. Once, we lost my keys inside the lining of my jacket and had to sleep on the front doorstep. We would lie in bed for days, eating tiramisu and watching movies. My friends weren’t crazy about him. A few told me he would eventually have to leave. We fought a lot. I got tired of his constant presence, always right next to me, even when I peed. Sometimes I would ignore him for days, but he was patient, sitting in the corner, reading The New Yorker, waving whenever I looked in his direction.
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