Shards

I'm talking to myself more than I am to her.

It's all a bit blurry. I was hit, a lot. In my stomach, in the jaw, in the nose. I pushed her off of her postition on top of me and onto the ground, I'm suprised I even could. I'm tiny compared to Lou. My face hurts, in fact my entire body hurts. Lou stands up, shoving her hands in her pockets. and staring down at me. I pull myself up from the sidewalk, ignoring the cuts and scrapes on my arms, and where I'm bleeding from my knee. 

"Don't say shit about my brother." She spits. How can she even say that to me? Her brother killed mine. How could she not be angry?

I guess a part of me gets where she's coming from. If they were as close as me and Angelo were, she doesn't want to believe her brother could do something like that. She's trying so hard to block out the bad things, the truth. It's the fear of change, especially in a situation that's already changing as is. But it has to change. We have to keep moving, we both have to move on from our brothers. It's hard, I know.

"No." I say. I sound so confident that even I'm surprised.

"No?"

"I get it. I get that you don't want to let go of who you think your brother is." I begin. "Trust me, I of all people know best. But...But you have to. Or else your just going to hurt yourself."

"I'm not. Shut up." Her voice is shaking, her hands too. Lou looks at the ground, not making eye contact with me.

"That's what I said. Lou, he isn't who you want to think is." Maybe I'm talking to myself more than I am to her. Maybe I'm talking more about Angelo than I am about Blaken. It still holds true. Just because I can find solace in my own words, doesn't mean they aren't meant for her too. My body hurts physically, and hers hurts emotionally. I know the feeling all too well.

"Just because Angelo was lying to you doesn't mean Blaken was lying to me." She shouts, voice cracking. "I know my brother! He...He didn't do it..."

"Who do you remind yourself of right now. What conversation does this remind you of."

I'm beginning to find the similarities in me and Lou. Yet, there are none at the same time. The way Lou is acting right now is the way I acted before, the way I acted before I knew better. It was such a long time ago, yet not at all. It feels like such a distant event in my life. I was so...Naive. I was still trusting a ghost more than another real human being.

I mean, who would? Lou at the time was a complete and utter stranger. I was still mourning the death of someone that I thought I knew. I wasn't willing to think about anything other than the Angelo I knew and loved. It was hard for me to break that box, it was hard to change my perspective on something I had been used to for so long. 

I went from loving Angelo, to not trusting Angelo, to not knowing Angelo, to hating him and he isn't even here. I want so badly for him to be simultaneously here for me because he's my best friend, and here for me for me to yell at, to hit, to be angry at. I feel the same way I did at the graveyard, numb. Static. Incomplete. Like even though I don't care at this point, I still need to.i still need to find those peices of myself in order to truly let go. I'm still clinging on to his death, to him, because it's the only way I can really feel anything at this point. 

And Lou is doing the same thing. I, as someone who knows better, feel the need to help her. 

Even if she did just throw me to the ground and bash my face in, she deserves better. I like to think that she is a good person, she's just hurting.

"Nobody. Nothing." 

"I acted the same way, remember?" I know she does, I know she rememebrs why the look in her eyes. She's in denial. 

It's like she's lost a brother to. 

"It's like you've lost a brother too." I say. 

"My brother is still alive!" She shouts, and I can hear her tearing up. The way she's choking on tears, trying to catch her breath, it shakes my bones, sending a feeling down the back of my neck that leaves me in a fear of sorts. "He's in a jail cell, but he's alive!"

"But you've lost the way you thought about him. You've lost him that you thought you knew." 

"He's still the same."

She doesn't get it. 

Though Lou is older than me, even if It's just by a year, I see my self in her. My past self, even though it was only a few weeks ago. It hurts to see it, to see someone acting the exact same way I did. I don't want to believe that I ever acted that ignorantly, mostly because I feel like a completly different person now. I am a different person now.