The sunrise floods light through my window, coaxing me out of bed. You were my sunlight just months ago.... It feels like decades, time is something I just can't wrap my mind around anymore. I remember the Dark Days when I was too depressed to move. You'd carry me out of bed and lay me in the grass. The sun knocked the wind out of me and bruised me with light. You'd kiss my cheek and sing the songs your mother sang to you as a child. Those were the days your sisters did my chores for me. Those nights your father would read stories to us all as we sat around the fire. I miss your singing most of all.
"How do you know just how to fix all this?"
"Fix all what?" You cocked your head to the side in confusion.
"Me...." My voice trailed off into nowhere.
"Well, I've had a lot of practice! I know what works because I see the storm clouds leave your eyes."
That was the day we talked about running away. "As soon as you're well enough!" You said. Well I'm well enough now, where the hell are you?
I walk to my vanity mirror and examine myself. The storm clouds in my eyes won't ever leave without you here. They're the first thing I see. Big, sad, grey eyes, mine are. I am repulsed by the dark, puffy bags under them. Crying throughout the night will do that, I suppose. The contrast of my skin to my raven hair makes my complexion look ghostly white.
All I really am is a ghost. The ghost of you.
I head upstairs to wash my face in the basin. The splash of water is so cold I gasp, I feel a bit more alive and slightly refreshed. I head to your old room and crack open the big bay window. Fragrant spring air rushes into the house, and I can't help but imagine how you'd beg me to go outside with you on a day like today. The thought makes my eyes swell with tears. I go to your sisters' room and fluff the pillows on their beds, there are no windows to open in this room. Just two, twin beds with matching, flowery bedsheets and the fluffiest pillows I've ever seen. I slowly make my way to your parents' room, turning the knob gently and silently as if trying not to wake a sleeping child. What a wonderful room it is. I spend the majority of my time here, looking through old photographs of you and your family. I try to imagine your family alive in this house. Your sisters painting and practicing piano, your mother in the kitchen, your father coming home from his work at the hospital, and you reading a book right under that bay window. It's hard to imagine since I didn't grow up with you in this house. I grew up in your city house. This is the safe place I was told to run to. I've been living here alone for a month or so now.
My favorite photographs are the ones of your mother. She is so beautiful, frozen in time with the most loving smile on her face. I wish I had gotten to meet her, I was just a baby when she died. I was still living with a family of my own. I know more about your mother than I do about my family, I remember all the stories you used to tell about her. How you could remember so much about her from such a young age is beyond my comprehension. I wish I remembered a thing about my family, but I was still an infant when The Illness took claim on them. Just as it did your mother. After she passed is when your father took you and your sisters to the city to further his studies in medicine; to seek vengeance for the killer of his wife. Your father, the doctor, was quite a renowned man in the city. My parents came to him when The Illness started to plague them, but it was too late, no hope was left. They passed away within days of infection, but my tiny life was still fighting. I was the last in the city still carrying The Illness. Your father was determined that I should live. He took me in as his own child and watched over me day and night, always injecting me with new pathogens and spoonfeeding me herbal medicines. You and your sisters would peer over my crib as I slept.
It is a wonder to me that you and your sisters loved me above all else, knowing I was your father's favorite. I was his miracle. I was his revenge against The Illness. Still, all my life you treated me as a treasured guest at your city house.
We were a happy clan until the Dark Days.
