Fear Is For The Living

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I wonder, sometimes, if it will always define me –

If I will always be the twin

With no twin.

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I wonder, sometimes, if a little of him

Is inside me, just waiting,

Just waiting for me to find it.

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I wonder, sometimes, if he hadn’t died,

Would I have?

I wonder, sometimes,

Would it be better that way?

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I shouldn’t have gone out that day.

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“Luca, you have to go to school.”

School.

A place where I feel his absence

So clearly, so greatly.

“I’m sick, Mama, don’t make me go.”

“Please, Mama, don’t make me go-“

And she doesn’t.

She never does.

She knows

That he should be here to fake-sick with me,

Sitting on our beds, groaning and giggling and fibbing half-heartedly.

We were never able to convince her, not quite –

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It is so easy now,

Now that there’s nothing to stay home for.

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Mama leaves to go to the shop,

“I’ll be ten minutes, top, okay?”,

And the house falls to silence

But the silence hurts, hurts so much, so I

Turn up music on my phone until surely, surely

The hurt of the quiet goes away, goes away

But it never does, never does, and quiet of his absence is

Unbearable

Tense

Attacking me

Clawing my brain through my ears

So I wear his headphones with the volume on max.

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Mama says it’ll make me go deaf.

I don’t care.

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I want to go back

I do

Please.

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My Mama needs me.

My brother needs me.

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I have homework to do.

Well, schoolwork, but the teachers ‘understand’

Why I can’t be there, on account of my grief,

They ‘understand’ when I turn work in late

With no explanation,

They ‘understand’. I want to ask if they’ve ever lost a brother

Because I know that they haven’t

So how could they possibly understand?

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They give me sad smiles and nods when I see them in the supermarket.

They don’t say anything because I’m wearing my music

And they assume I cannot hear them, but I can.

I hear their pity in their half-smiles

In their sad smiles

In their nods of acknowledgement

In their prolonged looks with my Mama, over my head.

They do not understand.

Nobody does.

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I am dead.

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I can’t go back.

I like the quiet, of it, of death.

It surrounds you, it moves with you,

It comforts you.

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I am an only child

And have been for a month.

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I don’t like the quiet.

I don’t like the quiet so I cry to fill it.

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I wander around the empty house

Everywhere I see is empty of him.

His photo is on the mantlepiece but his eyes are empty,

Mine is beside his

but he isn't beside me, not really, it's lying,

It isn't true! My heart hurts, hurts, hurts,

It is a void

Of his absence

That becomes a black hole and I smash his picture and I smash mine

And there’s glass on the floor and I pick it up and

I throw it at the walls and I

Scream

And I scream and I scream

And Mama comes home and she says,

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“Scream, Luca, Scream.

Anger is for the living.

Fear Is For The Living

Your brother fears no more.”

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“Scream, Luca, Scream.”

She gently pulls off his headphones from around my head.

I don't need my music when I make my own, when I cry.

She wraps her arms around me.

She kisses my forehead.

"It's okay to be angry. It's okay to be afraid.

Fear Is For The Living, Luca,

So fear the moment when you don’t anymore.”

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