09.08.23

On weekend nights, when i don’t have the overhanging pressure of school in the morning, and i don’t need to meet my body’s demand for sleep— Sometimes my mind will drift to memories of him. Has it been two or three years since we last spoke? cripplingly distorted memory fogs my mind, and i am incapable of recalling what normalcy was between us. I know we talked everyday. i know we laughed and opened up to eachother. i recall the time you burned your fathers letter infront of your computer screens rein-action of a real me. i did not speak as you did it, i watched you read it, i watched it affect you. 

Though my memory is my shortcoming, i have no lack when recalling his abuse. i remember sitting cross legged on my bed as he told me he did not see me “as a real person”, as he told me that i was the only one who was truly ever there for him. i remember my hand on my head in class as i begged him to delete the photos of me. I remember him suggesting the exchange for the first time. Though it blurs— i remember it all. It’s deep inside me and once my fingertips break through the cold surface of the love i hold for my brother, i find my reality amongst the mud. Painfully aware every second of the day of how he really saw me, painfully aware of how he shredded my brain those months. Painfully aware that i know now the firsthand definition of unconditional love. Painfully, painfully aware of how i loved him as if he were my own kin, as if he were my brother. 

But the world is always moving, and it’s been two or three years since we last spoke. I can reflect and cry and find comfort in men of other media, but the worlds always moving; and sooner or later, i’ll have to go to sleep.