Your Brother
I look for pieces of you in him. It hurts but I can’t stop myself. He looks so much like you now. Just 19 years old. The way his car smells of oil and grease reminds me of driving around with you. I try to like the smell but I never really did. I watch him work on my breaks, sweat pouring down his face under the summer sun. My mind takes me back to your garage, and the hours spent there. I found it so boring then. It’s still boring now, but I treasure it somehow.
I say something and for the first time I hear him laugh. It chokes me up a bit but I push it down. He reminds me so much of you. The goofy way the sound of his laughter is more air than anything else. I don’t know if I could explain it to anyone who never knew you. He’s quiet like you were in the beginning. I wonder if it’s because he doesn’t know me, or if he simply is that way. I cling to every word he says, this boy I barely know. The way he talks, the sound of his voice, everything takes me back to you.
Some part of me never wants to leave. I can just keep pretending you’re not gone. Sitting in his car in the dark in silence, a tear runs down my face in the back seat. I tell him he looks like you, but he says nothing. I wonder if he sees it. I wonder if it kills him the way it’s killing me. I wonder how he’s hurting. I wonder how I would would hurt to lose a sister. I think of your mother and how she must feel. I feel guilty for hurting like I do when there are so many others more entitled to the pain.
I long to be close to him like I was once so close to you, but it doesn’t make sense. We are practically strangers, him and I. I can barely make conversation with him. I just don’t know what to say. He doesn’t seem to want to talk about you, but that’s all I can think of looking at him. It’s impossible to explain these feelings. It hurts, but I’m so scared to let go of it. I can’t stop staring at him. There is so much of you in his eyes.
It’s getting late, and it’s time for him to go. He thanks me for dinner. So polite. I want to hug him, but I don’t know how to take a step closer and put my arms around this person that isn’t you. So I tell him I’ll see him tomorrow, and I hear the front door shut at the bottom of the stairs. My boyfriend says he really likes him. He says he thinks he might have liked you if he’d known you better. He says he doesn’t see much of you in his personality, that you look alike but you seem like such different people.
I feel crazy. Am I making it all up? Am I looking for you where you will never exist? It would be so much easier if you were here. I wish none of this had ever happened. It doesn’t make sense and it’s not fair. It’s not fair for me to miss you like I do. It’s not fair for me to hurt this way. It’s not fair the way your memory haunts me every day. You were always the one I came to when I was feeling the way I do now. Where do I go now that you’re gone? What do I do without you?
