All of us sat in a painful silence that draped over us like a cool quilt. Each set of our electric eyes had lost their sparkle. Swollen and scarlet, full of knowing what was to come. I think everyone comes into the world with a little fire inside them that only burns for something once in your short existence. She was the gasoline. She was the bucket of ice cold water, too. Maybe that’s why I can only take freezing showers and when I’m standing under the rain, I usually cry. I remembered her perfectly; a pristine picture book of her best moments that my tired mind kept flipping through. After a while I couldn’t take any more paper cuts. I ripped out my favorite couple pictures and the book that kept her alive retired to the attic of my brain. Her sleepy head resting on the broken shell of whom my dad used to be. I sort of envied him in those last few moments. She wanted him and it was clear, but we all wanted her in our own quivering arms. To race against time so maybe we wouldn’t ever forget her, I know now that that is a burden he’ll carry forever. Maybe parents really do know best. You hear stories about people who have completely hidden their very own childhood from themselves; I hope that she isn’t one of them. I think I might be how else I would have made it through the night terrors and the empty place at the dinner table. It’s still vacant but we all pretend not to notice. I can hear you breathing when I listen to classical piano solos and I’m pretty sure that’s why crying myself to sleep is normalcy and cold sweats feel like routine. I can’t help but hate the sound of my own heartbeat because it won’t stop beating for you. But it’s out of my throat and down the drain every time I revisit the thought of your precious little fingers and the way you loved to splash in the bath. The last few stars flickered out that day so darkness just feels like