There were songs to be sung.
Pages to be read.
Letters to be burned..
Yet you left them all for,
Me.
On my lonesome personal holiday.
"Why won't you come?", you knew I'd have asked as your heart trembled, absorbing the news and imagined..
People coming into the parlor, dressed in tears and shades of sorrow.
Children were crying.
Friends were crying..
My mother was crying.
And so were my beautiful baby brothers.
You know, I wish I could have been able to watch them grow up.
I waited in that box, filled with nothing but an ache to see my you just once in my life before I left. You must have felt the same,
because you quickly resolved,
And were dead set on coming. Cursed, the weather and ignored your bodies cry for sleep. You needed to come and see me at least once. So you caught a plane out of your country into mine. Shaking and red eyed you explained how you knew where to come on my Facebook, to my family.
Because they never knew you in person.
You could see a casket behind them.
Dark brown and flanked by flowers of iridescent colors. But you fell to your knees when you saw the baby pictures on the board.
Of me when I was small.
They took you into their arms and cried with you. You wish you could have come sooner. We both wished that we didn't have to meet this way...you are hollow by the time you reach a seat.
Attending service and keeping to the back.
Listening to every story and word people had to say for her. Proud of me, weren't you big brother?
Weren't you crying for a miserable sort of joy, when you found out that they put your name into the program? And listed you as my older brother. Because I always spoke of having you as my brother and made sure everyone knew it?
I guess you couldn't hear anything over the sobs you were holding in.
I'm sorry that this time, I can't stop you from crying..
Wistfully looking at my younger cousins who I assured you that you'd love on sight. You know that I did my best to raise them well. "What more could you do?", you thought. Yet again, I made your heart swell with stabs of pain and joy.
When you left the parlor and got to hear about me and the poems I'd write about you. You wish we could have known each other better. Smiling through tears as my family and friends consoled you and your broken heart. They knew by now that you must have loved me.
Even if I never said it to you.
You must have known.
That big brother,
I love you. :)