Sitting by the bonfire, papers in her hands. As she finished reading her paper he sat there in amazement. He looked towards her with an awestruck face saying "Your so smart, much smarter than me", things that while he meant with the best intent she had taken and felt bad. She loved her brother with all her heart, and knew he was smart, wise, and above all, her brother. No matter what she said, he would continue saying, " I wish I could write like that". She loved that he was proud of her. It was her big brother, who doesn't want the one person in the world, who means everything to them, to be proud of them? Acknowledge their achievements. Praise their success.
She was book smart, he was a different learner, but a quick learner at that. Very handy. Not one for tremendous aspirations, he'd be content for the rest of his life to sit on the pond and cast his line into it over and over. He best described it as peaceful. Something she would never understand. Always under stress to turn in papers and get more homework done. Her concerns were about succeeding. If only she could sit and be for one moment to grasp the beauty of this simplicity.
She never learned the art of it. Not until the day he passed away. The one person who meant the world to her. The person whom when she felt so down, felt down because he hated seeing her unhappy. The person who built her up and praised her for things she found petty. Her hero, her life, her purpose, gone. The days although passed slowly while happening, seemed to fly by and finding herself a year and some odd months later still feeling awestruck.
Her inspiration, the person she got so excited to see and wanted to tell everything to. The one who made fun of her and laughed with her until she cried. The memories they had were endless. The inseperable pair, now diminished. It should have been her, there was no denying it. While she wasted her life he cherished his. So many loved him, there was no question in that. So why not her? Lord only knows.
The day he passed, she did too. Her life fell apart, and she never found the cure to this broken heart. She had infact given up on mending her heart. Broken bones were easier to fix than broken hearts. Or atleast that's what she had felt.
Now days she continues on in a weary state of wonder. And when it comes down to it she just doesn't care. She doesn't care what those judgamental parents thought about her, nor what anyone else thought about her. She wastes her life with everything of the earth. Slowly deteriorating, she finds her self waking up to exhaustion and feeling quite sick of her current scene.
Never had she realized how much she had let in, how much didn't matter any more. Things that were once frowned upon by her now hackneyed in her sight. All those people she had once found ignorant for what they had let in, were now her close aquaintinences. Those people she laughed at for their lapses in judgement were what she had degraded to.
The week, now almost over, she told herself she'd try to mend the broken heart, fill the empty parts. It was like when your dad says he plans on cleaning the garage out, it takes weekend after weekend to finally start, and even longer to finish. She finally started working towards her goal, but found herself a year later looking in the wrong places. She hadn't needed to replace him, she thought to herself. The question, while simple, she had not figured out just yet. It seemed like the harder she looked, the further off she had gotten herself.
Out of frustration, she ended this promise. She went for a walk. Finding herself reminiscing on times spent with her brother in the clay pit. Times when Tommy, her cousin, Travis, and she would run around on the mounds of clay pretending to climb mountains. Racing through the woods to see who could make it back to the house first, the last one wasn't a rotten egg, they just got their faces rubbed in it. Somehow while walking through she could see it all. The go cart doing doughnuts, then they disappeared and it was Travis, Lindsey, and she once again, except in his truck. They had gone to check food plots that day. All these wonderful memories with her big brother.
Memories, that seemed never enough. And yet never ending. Sometimes she felt she would trade the rest of her life to get back 2 minutes in that hospital room. 2 minutes more to hold his hand, run her fingers through his hair, and talk to him. It was so unreal that it had already been one year, and counting. Life had never happened to her before. She had never experienced something so difficult in all her life. She missed her cousin who left her when she was just a kid. But it never hurt this bad. It never left her lonely, not like this.
She never understood this heartbreak. Never understood why she lost her brother while others kept theirs, Or why she had been left feeling alone to deal with all else that life brought. I don't think I'll ever understand why I lost my brother. But I did. I think the fires almost out.