Shards

Invisible

I can't stop crying.

He won't stop crossing my mind, his face imprinted into the back of my eyelids.

His image, his smile, his laugh, it won't get out of my head.

His voice is loud in my ears, his laugh echoing and ringing too loud for me to handle, too loud to hear my own thoughts. It drowns everything else out

I can't stop thinking of my brother, how happy he was the day that he died. How amazingly joyful he was saying bye to me minutes before he died. He couldn't have known that it was his last day on earth. I didn't know it would be the last time I ever saw my big brother. Everything about that day was perfect before he died at 19 years old. Everything was so normal, like it was every Saturday. 

'Too young' My teachers kept saying, with gentle pats on the shoulder and fake smiles of pity. I knew they didn't mean it. I knew that they saw him, not knew him. Some of them knew him, some of them were grieving like I was. His employer would always mention how much of a bright young man he was, even now, a month later. How much of a hardworker he was. I pass them in the grocery store and they speak to me like I'm about to break. That might because I am about to break. 

They don't say it because they miss him, a month later. They do it because I miss him.

His former teachers stopped mourning. His boss topped mourning. His friends stopped mourning. Everyone has moved on, besides me. I don't understand how. I can't fathom how they just move on from this, move on from him. Why don't they miss him like I do? 

I feel hollow and empty. Like a piece of me has been carved out. I want closure. I need closure. Better yet, I need him here with me. He was everything to me, he was my best friend.

I don't talk to anyone now, I don't even consider trying at all. No relationship can even be compared to mine and Angelo's so why even try in the first place? Why even bother to open my mouth. I'll only feel guilty if I do try making friends, I'll feel like I'm trying to replace him. Nothing could replace him. Nothing could replace the memories I have of him, the moments we shared that can never be replicated.

I think of the fact that there will be no more of those moments, and the warm tears fill up my eyes again. I'm alone. I'm in my brother's room, sitting on his floor. I'm too afraid to sit on his bed in case I mess it up. He always loved to make his bed perfect every morning, to match the rest of his perfect room. I look at the pictures on his wall, ones of me and him on our many adventures, ones of him and his girlfriend are in the middle of the wall. He said it's because that was the first place he looked every morning and he wanted to see his favorite girls as soon as he woke up every morning.

I can't look at the pictures. I can't look at his face. So I close my eyes and I let the tears fall down my cold cheeks, without his warmth to save me. I miss my big brother. I miss his hugs.

I feel invisible right now, the only person that ever saw me, really saw me, was him. That's how it's always been and how it always will be. There's no denying that. There's no avoiding that. I don't want it to be true, I want anything but for it to be true but I can't stop think ing that it is. I've always depended so heavily on my brother to make me feel there, to make me feel alive and seen but without him here, am I? Am I real? Was he real? Is this all a dream? I can't help but feel like I'm going to wake up in a different body, as different person. I can't help but feel like my entire existence is coma dream, a nightmare now. Angelo was the only real thing in my life, and now he's gone and I'm alone, and more scared of myself than I've ever been. More scared of my thoughts and my head than I ever was in the past. 

His death took a piece of me, something deep down I didn't know I needed. Shards of me are scattered in his room, or in his car, or in our old school. Pieces of me are everywhere he has been but isn't anymore. I didn't know I needed these pieces of myself, but not having it makes me feel like the shallow end of the swimming pool. My life had never felt so out of line, but I'm determined to fix it, to heal. For Angelo as well as myself.