to my dead brother
you haven't been you in a very long time. your absence is a wound that never closes.
it feels like all i can do is collect your memories, like a trinket to place inside of my little trunk.
when the days are long and the house is quiet; i open the trunk. pulling you out, piece by piece. even though they're just fragments of you, i hold them like they're whole.
i look at all of the little cells that used to hold your soul together. sometimes i sift through them, looking for some small part of you that i might have missed.
do you mind reminiscing with me? you're one of the only people who will sit with me and listen.
the skull we found in the woods that day, when the branches cracked under our feet like brittle bones.
i remember when i saw it, i froze dead in my tracks. i walked over to touch it and you yanked my arm back, 'don't touch it,' you said, 'you'll get sick.'
i sighed as you walked over and picked it up. cradling it in your hands like a prize, you placed it on your head and wore it like a crown. but you looked so small under that skull, you were still prey.
the key to your room, you told me that you wanted me to have it. i won't let anybody take it from me. i don't know what you had to hide in your room.. but the door stays locked now. i figured you would've wanted it that way.
it's full of things i will never understand. but it doesn't matter, i don't mind not understanding.
but it reminds me of the fact you hated how i'd keep secrets from you, and everybody.. but my thoughts are mine to keep. just like this key.
this is the holy water that mom doused you with when she thought you were demonically possessed. i remember those few weeks were hell, i don't know what was wrong with you, but it wasn't simple enough to solve with an exorcism. there wasn't a demon inside of you, it was something worse..
i remember you ran away from home after that, and it only made things more intense. i think that mom and dad felt embarrassed above all else.
ours was the only house where the walls screamed, everyone else kept their demons quiet.
the day of the douse, dinner was burnt that night. and the house was so silent you could hear the mice crawling around in the attic. that was the night something in our family fractured, and i don't think it ever healed.
you gave me a doll on my birthday.. for years, she has been one of my most prized possessions. i remember the look on your face when you handed the box to me. you avoided me the entire morning, pretending you hadn't gotten me a gift. then you handed me that box, tied tight with a thick ribbon.. my eyes lit up. when i lifted the lid, i saw myself in her-- and she hasn't left my side since.
she has survived with me all these years, and the cracks in her body have spread like spiderwebs. it's almost like her wounds mimic my own. our cracks will outlast us, and i don't know which one of us is closer to breaking.
we used to play near the lily pond, i'd admire the flowers and you'd point out the frogs. with each croak, and the swelling of its bulbous throat, you'd laugh and say, 'you look like that.' i'd get upset, but never stayed angry for long. i went back last week, it's much quieter now.
i could barely see you, and i could not feel your presence when the wind made the water ripple.
but i saw your reflection slip under the water, i couldn't save you.
your bedroom walls were filled with love letters, messy writing and sprayed with perfume. but your hospital room was almost empty.. just a few impersonal 'get well soon' cards.
in your drawer, i found a wax-sealed letter—was it for you or from you? you never opened it..
i wanted to save you, but your wounds were in too deep.
they weren't wounds i could just wrap in bandages. they were festering and rotting from the inside out, spreading through your blood rapidly.
and no one understood... i know those nurses never knew how much you were loved beneath all that decay. they only knew the medical reason you ended up in that hospital bed, not the reasons that got you there. they wrapped your soft bones in so many layers of gauze, you looked like the marshmallows we used to roast. i miss you, and no amount of gauze will hold you together now.
they kept telling me to just to let you go. but i remembered when i saw you laying on the side of the road, dark eyes and a wet nose..
my mind thought about just euthanizing you, hoping it would be by a gentle needle.. a steady hand-- done with the delicacy of a taxidermist.
i wanted to give you the gift of peace.. but that didn't happen, you didn't get the peaceful death i had imagined.
you suffered. you melted into that white hospital bed, your skin fused to the sheets. i will never forgive them for what they did to you.
and i can't stop thinking, i should've done it myself. i should've picked up one of dad's golf clubs or even just a rock.
i should have bashed your head in.
having your brain spilled out onto the ground like a melted ice cream cone would've been a gentler fate than you ended up with. it would've been kinder, it would've been quicker.
but i didn't.
if only i had more courage, if only i had the guts..
i would've taken that sacrifice for you even if it meant i would go down below. but i didn't, and now it's too late to pretend i could've been your saviour.
i miss the days when we'd run through fields, collecting wildflowers. their petals were soft, and their pollen clung to our fingers.
but now the bouquet i cherish is starting to crumble in my hands..
they say there can be beauty in decay-- but i don't see it, and i won't think it's beautiful when it's happening to me.
the flowers are so dry and dead now, but maybe if i hold onto them long enough, they'll bloom again one day.
i regret not pressing some of the petals into a book to keep. and just like these petals not even the spirit of you is preserved.
i can't feel you anywhere. not in the wind, not in the rain, not even in a dream. you're gone somewhere that i can't follow, or maybe you've just left me behind on purpose.
you spat that tooth into your hand, smiling through the blood. it was a trophy, a piece of you that should have been discarded, but now it's the only part of you that hasn't rotted.
you told me to keep it because it was 'cool', so i did just that- kept it in a jewelry box for years. i never wanted to keep it, but now i can't let it go.
your brittle teeth, cement bones, and angel wings.
you were once a puzzle, or a beautiful mosaic-- red sclerae and tender cheekbones.. full of little pieces that were irreplaceable to me, especially when you started to fall apart.
one of the last times i saw you, you were pieces of fractured bone, ripped tendons and sepsis crawling through your veins.. draped in your soft white hospital gown.
now, here we are.. with pieces of you and your tooth in a box with no way to put you back together again.
born broken, we never stood a chance.. together we had two heads but just one heart.
you said i had enough love for both of us, and you had enough rage for four.
my love reminded you of dad, and your anger was all mom.
you had that same vein popping out of your temple when you yelled, just like she did.
i haven't seen mom yell in a very long time.. she doesn't laugh or even properly cry. she doesn't do much of anything anymore.
she just breathes, and whenever i bring up your name she just looks at me silently with the same old tears in her eyes.
i wish it was an honour killing, something heroic or something that made sense for you.
you were in your Sunday best, hair combed and your suit crisp.
i remember you telling me, just two months ago;
'if i get so old and ever forget your name, just shoot me—right in the head. shoot me in the head, instant kill-- it's the most humane thing to do,' you laughed but i think you meant every word.
oh, and with an engraved gold bullet.. to honour my death.'
to honour your death... to make it okay, make it better. 'and pay your respects to the red velvet coffin.'
i can't say that i made it okay, or made it better.. i'll pay my respects, over and over again.. until the day i'm in the ground with you. but even then, it still won't feel like enough.
i helped pick this one out. if i'm going to be the one looking at it so often, i get to pick what it looks like. i wanted it to be beautiful, like you once were.
now your name is carved in this headstone, but it's carved deeper into me.
i lean against this stone, hoping i might hear your voice again, maybe your laugh. but it never happens, and i don't know why. where did you go?
this is the final trinket, and the one i never wanted to collect.
all i have left are these memories of you, locked away in the trunk.
things i tell myself are beautiful, even when they're ugly; ugly like the way you died. empty like the emptiness you left behind. they're still pieces of you, they're pieces i pretend are beautiful in my point of view.
i beg and plead to see you again.
and i wish that you never had to die.
the end of your life, a curtain call-- there's no encore, and no second act. that's not how life is, that's not how life works. it's not a fantasy and i realize now it's not magical.. you let me believe it was, you let me be ignorant. you didn't want to ruin it for me, but now i realize that this life without you, is the closest thing to nothing at all.
in this trunk, is where i've locked away so much, pieces of you i can't bare to look at anymore. and yet, i can't bare to leave them behind either. sometimes i hope that the lock will break and you'll spill out, whole again. i have to accept that you're gone, and all i have left is this. an old dusty box, filled with things that no longer mean anything to anyone but me.