When I’m alone, the images I see are horrifying. Words are words; they can begin a description and end it without truly owning a thing; so horror does not truly grasp my sight of mind when I say it is horrifying, I mean it is of something I cannot fathom in words. You may imagine me imagining this day, the stark innings of pity and people spilling their sorry confessions and laments to me; It will get better, trust me, I know. I understand how you feel. Then perhaps, no, it is a certainty, you will watch me run into the ignorant people who continue on their vulgar decorum of her without knowing that absence had come to life. You may also witness my contemplation of things normal men should never think of doing to another.

I will remember her as a child companion. The smell of rhubarb and wet forest, getting into trouble where peace had originally persisted. When I’m alone, you will imagine me imagining the scene over and over to point out flaws that cannot be corrected. You will watch me curl up into an armored ball of vengeful and tasteless rage for those who ever decided she was anything less than I believed. You may view me getting better because of it, slowly undermining the sickness that festered there since her death. You will see me begin to write again.

I will imagine the scene and the prosperous, needed ideas for the letter I will write. I address it to her and begin crying again; you will watch this.

To Noah,

Along your history, our childhood, I had an idea--I thought I might be able to stop you--but you knew, much clearer than I, your fate and Destiny. Attempting the idea will kill me, because that means you failed to succeed the voices that say your name at bounded night when there is nobody to hear them but you. Attempting means you tried and failed, could not stop yourself, from dying.

When I hear you cry because of his treachery, or the silence I know is terrible, you twist yourself into my lungs and I know then, you can’t breathe; I have to sit and watch that tacit poison take you. It takes me because I just can’t watch anymore. I used to go sleeping, worrying that we might not have as much fun as we did the days before. And now--now there is no sleep for me, laying numb wondering, tomorrow, will you be as alive as you were yesterday?

I owe you an apology--but I don’t know where to start.

The beginnings and endings of my sorry remain rooted in the if-and-when you find yourself without me. My sister, we are one proper, complete year apart, have never been separated or though of leaving each other for more than a half-second, so my sorry is grounded there. In my unwilling, daunting fear that I shall wake up from this dream to find you gone, somehow, knowing it to be of my doing.

My sorry precedes every stretched mile you don’t know I would walk for you and every acute degrees I will turn, screaming, if-and-when I find your body--because the pain was too much for you to bear. Every moment perpetuated along the thin line of your body-bag, my fingers trailing your steps and wondering--pondering abstractions--the why and the how I could have let it happen. I am sorry that I will not bring myself to continue living after you are finally but a shadow in my mind, an echo of what you used to be.

My sorry happens the moment I fight my first real battle, and winning, because you beat the scared out of my tolerance for people in fifth grade. I’m sorry that I didn’t teach you how to look at a man and begin to think of trust. I am not that man--my sorry happens there.

In the end, I am sorry I was silent at your funeral--seeming lent to the simple beauty in remembering the good times and ignoring your pain. So if-and-when we are burying you under the leaves of autumn, know that I am already there, waiting a proper, complete year ahead of you.

It is the least I can do.

All Love,
Shameus