Denial

I hear the words that are spoken,

But my brain refuses to process them.

Mist obscures my vision,

As I try to fight the denial that consumes me.

They waited years to tell me about him,

But would my feelings have changed if they’d told me sooner?

Either way he’d still be gone,

The brother that I’d wanted practically my whole life.

Nothing could change the fact that he couldn’t be here with me today,

That he’d never get to see some of the most important moments in my life,

Never get to share those moments with me,

And I’d never get to see the look on his face,

The look of a proud older brother,

Glowing from his younger sister’s achievements.

He wasn’t even a year old when he was taken from this world and his family,

As a result of a premature birth,

And sometimes I wonder if maybe that’s the true reason my dad hated hospitals.

His first son taken away from him,

The doctors unable to save him,

All while he was in the same building.

I wonder about it,

But only my dad truly knows the answer to that question.

I don’t know how he can stand it though,

How he can live his life each day without shedding so much as a tear,

When I shed a million every night,

Hiding within the black blanket that covers me,

Shelters me from my own fears.

Sometimes I feel like his presence is all around me,

Like he’s watching over me,

Protecting me from harm’s way.

I don’t know how I can tell it’s him,

Maybe it’s some internal instinct linking us together,

Some unconscious voice deep inside my head,

But I know it’s him.

It scares me how much I’ve come to rely on that presence,

The presence of a figure with no face,

Masked in a sea of darkness,

Shrouded in a dark everlasting cloak.

But I need it around more than I’ve ever needed anything,

To feel safe inside of a world with bottomless sin,

To feel like I belong somewhere,

Other than the mindless world that I was born into.