From the Outside, Looking In

1

                    Silence.
                   Finally, silence. 
Glass was littered upon the gravel, glistening in the dimness of the night, scattered haphazardly around me in bloody fragments. The car was crumpled, destroyed, tires still spinning; the silence was louder than anything I've ever heard.
                      Pain.
I felt it, I knew it was there, it altered my thoughts and my movement and made me feel weak. I tried to move, tried to get to her, I was so aware of my surroundings yet so fucking lost in the same breath. The same painful and barely there breath struggled to free itself from my lungs.
                      Anger.
I felt it in my core, it rattled me, shook my bones, the same question screaming in my brain that still remained unanswered:
Why?
                      Tears.
  I felt them pouring down my face and they exerted me. I was bleeding, cold, so fucking angry, but the need to know if she was okay was stronger than anything I could have possibly felt at that moment, maybe ever.  I cried and I screamed until my voice was no longer audible and heard nothing in return. My hands shook; my heart was still beating while hers might not be. Stupid tears found their way down my face in pools, I didn't want to see but yet I must.
                       Loss.
It was a thing I endured my entire life, but nothing like this. My eyes struggled to focus, a haze remained no matter how many times I strained them or blinked. I still saw her. I still fucking saw her and I lost it. I screamed and struggled to stand, but I had to touch her again. This can't be it, it can't. Not like this. Not right now.
The glass cut into my knees; I was so bloody, so weak, but she was all I saw. I crawled to her like a child and collapsed against her limp body, her shirt muffling my countless cries. It was snowing now, but it wasn't magical, wasn't special like it was supposed to be. She had woken up starry eyed that morning, over the moon that the weather man had told her it would snow, not knowing this is how she'd enjoy it. I cried harder, breathlessly, begging someone to help, desperate. No one was there, not even her, it was painfully just me.
My little sister was gone. And it was my fault.

                         —————————————-
                          Laughter.  
I could change the music one more time, I could glance at her smiling and happy face to see if this is what she wanted to listen to. Nothing would happen, we wouldn't die. She was singing then, so oblivious that I was going to crash and that she was going to die even though she hadn't lived to see her twelfth birthday. I had smiled because she was so happy, we were going to bake the cookies that she was holding so eagerly in her lap and it was going to snow. She was going to live.
It happened so fast I can't remember. I can't remember and I am angry. All I can remember, no matter how obsessively I've racked my brain after every night that followed, is flying through the air. Hearing her screams, rendered useless as I watch her fly throughout the windshield, despite her seatbelt she'd made sure she'd fastened after we left the store. It was a blur, painful and real and the reason I'd packed one single bag  and ran away. I ran away from all I had ever known, all that's ever known me, everything I didn't deserve. I ran until my legs gave out, crashing into the earth and laying there until sleep reeled me under its spell. The rain, the sun, nothing stopped me.
I checked into a motel with what little money I had and stayed there until I had no more left. I knew what I had to do to keep shelter so I did what I had to. I stood at the end of every street, dressed in almost nothing, waiting for a desperate honk and a desperate pair of hands. Desperate lips, desperate sex, and money in my back pocket kept me in various hotels, kept me away.
I longed to feel something, anything, but I was certain I never would again. I deserved this. I was a killer. I was nothing. If it weren't for me, Lily would be alive. Lily would be well. Happy. And as of today, she would be twelve. I swallowed hard, lied awake that night as I did every other, and I cried. I was hollow.