I am the secret you can never hide.
I watch as he wipes my blood off the knife he just pulled out of my chest, his usual heart-shaped smile replaced with a thin, grim line. I am silent as he washes the knife and scrubs at it vigorously, as if trying to wipe away the death it has inflicted. I watch, and I am silent, because dead men tell no tales. When the knife has been scrubbed so clean it glistens, he decides it isn’t enough and burns the blade, and wraps the knife in a thick cloth before throwing it into a black garbage bag.
It will never be enough.

I am the gesture you can never forget.
As he buries my body in a forest I’ve never been to, I watch as his eye starts to twitch, a habit he has whenever he’s nervous. I follow him back to his car through the trees and I don’t miss the way his hand balls up into a fist, and his wrist flicks just so. I am forced to think that it was exactly that move that ended my life, it was exactly that angle at which he flicked his wrist to plunge his knife straight through my heart. I try not to think about how my death came at his hands, and instead I watch as he tries to relax the hand that murdered, as he tries to make his muscles forget the action and its consequences.
His body will always remember.

I am the mistake you can never erase.
He switches on the water heater and undresses slowly, throwing his clothes into another garbage bag. I understand that he will burn them once he gets the chance. I follow him into his bathroom, a room I am almost as familiar with as I am his body. I watch in silence as he soaps himself all over, scrubbing so furiously at milky white until it turns raw pink, and I reach out to stop him from hurting himself. He feels my hands on his wrists and shivers, and I forget for a moment that he can’t really feel my touch, but then I remember and pull my hands away. He scrubs especially hard at the hand that held the knife, until the skin breaks and blood falls on blue shower tiles.
He will never feel clean again.

I am the love you never lost.
He walks back into his bedroom fully clothed, fingers tracing the outside edge of a frame containing a photograph of us. I can only watch as tears start forming in his large eyes, spilling over onto plush cheeks. He bows his head at the me in the photograph and I can almost hear him whisper an apology. I want to reach out and hug him, I want to tell him I forgive him – but I am no more solid than the words he just whispered, so I stand and watch. As he climbs into the bed we have shared multiple times, I feel obliged to climb in with him, to hold him in his grief and his loneliness, even though he cannot feel me. I hold him until he falls asleep, and then I listen to him talk. He apologizes to me over and over again, begging me to forgive him as he sleeps, whispering words of love and lost temper. And I only learn then that pain doesn’t leave you after death, because the desperation in my chest hurts too much to ignore. S o I try my best, through tears of my own, to let him know I forgive him, to tell him I still love him.
But he will never, ever know.