The first year after your death was the hardest;

Largely because I still expected you to come back.

To walk in the door, with a sideways grin & a shrug.

Asking, “Did ya miss me?”

I do miss you; you have not come back.

Not that first year, nor the near six that’ve followed.

Meanwhile, each passing year the grief

has been harder and harder to swallow.

What am I to do this coming March?

When my birthday arrives

and I reach the age

that you stopped aging.

When you pushed that filth into your veins

did you think of the fate you subjected me to?

How you doomed a little sister

to become the bigger?

I try to remember the good;

the leaf piles and igloos.

But it’s overshadowed by the bad;

the silent, immobile hearts and ambulances.

I wish for your return every day

Still hoping one day you’ll respond

To the messages I still send you.

But Gods, I swear I’ll just never forgive you.

Sometimes I wish you were alive so we could fight

Square up, and bloody each other, until I could knock the light out of your eyes,

like you did mine.

You know what, I’m tired of trying to be kind,

You want to know the legacy you left behind?!

You’ve made our father shrink

Both in personality and in size

he’s half the man he was when his son was alive.

I can see it in his - your - eyes.

You’ve made our mother wilt

a beautiful flower shriveling without her light.

You’ve left her fair skin covered in angry red scars that only my weary grief stricken eyes can see.

You’ve made our angry older sister

that much more bitter and

she’s folded in on herself like a retired flag.

Now I’m forced to miss her too!

So I f*cking ask you dear brother,

Did you ever stop to consider,

what would truly happen when you made

your little sister the bigger?