Zoey and Zolani

Chapter four: Captivity is broken hope.

Captivity is broken hope 🌻

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Zoey
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Risk it all, my father used to say. Risk it all and hope again.

Hoping never got me anything but heartbreak. The type of heartbreak that marked you, the cracks becoming a part of the design of your heart. The type of heartbreak that stayed with you  no matter how far you ran or tried to hide, it was always there because it was yours. It was you.

The heartbreak that lingered over everything you did and said.

The night before my eighteenth birthday, as I laid in bed,staring at the ceiling my heart was wide awake, hoping.

The room was bathed in darkness, windows  open as the night air blew  through the curtains in gentle waves. I couldn't fall asleep with the windows closed.

The scent of the  night went through my nose and down to my beating heart. This broken, bleeding shattered heart that pulsed through the night, alive.

Pulsing with hope.

It would be my very first birthday without Zolani. Without his smile and laughter, without his constant teasing. Without meeting his eyes that were so similar to mine. Without…

Life kept taking and taking from me, leaving me bared naked left with nothing but my shattered heart.

What was I Zoey, without Zolani.

I thought a lot about Zolani that night. If he was scared because I knew that his birthday would be spent being taken from juvenile prison to an adult prison.  The tears of frustration fell from my eyes  and  wet the pink pillow I slept on. My heart burned with these stirred up emotions and I felt like yelling.

I cried a river for Zolani but these tears could bring no comfort. I was absolutely useless in the heartache he was going through.

I wanted him free. I wanted  him with my mother and I. The house was so empty, so lifeless without him. All the joy and the laughter seemed to have been arrested along with him.

How could I hope?

When he would spend fourteen more years in jail, when everyone was moving on without him but my life felt stagnant.

I couldn't carry on without Zolani.

We weren't the clingy, overly affectionate twins but he was my first best friend and I was his.

Some people have to go out and find their best friends out there in the world but I was miraculously born with mine.

I was the fish and he was my chips, just like my father had said.

I cried hard into my pillow, but none of these tears could save him.

I hated crying with everything in me. It brought out the weakest parts of me that I would die before letting anyone see and it made me vulnerable.

Vulnerability didn't sit well with me. It was an emotion that I could safely tie with a beggar. There was something pleading about being vulnerable, you were broken and there's something in you that wanted the comfort of a loved one, of a stranger, of anyone who would listen.

Vulnerable people were needy and I didn't want to need anyone.

I didn't want to need anyone like I needed my father, dependent on him, heart and soul.

I didn't want to need anyone like I needed Zolani, dependent on him, heart and soul but I did.

I needed him.