In the end my parents manage to hold it 
together, all the way to the bitter end they do; all six dreary- the worms crawl in the worms crawl out -feet of it. They also, the entire time, hold on to me for dear life, as if by pressing my form to theirs they can reassure themselves that not only was I there with them, but that I was going to be for a long, long time to come.
Like they know any better.
Like they have any say in the matter, otherwise, would not my brother be here with them, with me, with us… would not his grave be empty, his death victor-less and incomplete?
Much like grief, this too seems smothering, the weight of words much too pressing, much too weighty for one as young as I, as well as the hand that turns these pages[1].
My day began as such. I packed both my breakfast and my lunch for I knew I would not have time to do so later. My breakfast consisted of a strawberry yogurt and a small container of sliced strawberries… not that I had a thing for strawberries, it just so happens that I would be eating them twice today, an occurrence purely coincidental I assure you. For lunch I have prepared a salad which consists of a handful of raw spinach and three cups of leaf lettuce. To these I have added the essentials, two tablespoons of raspberry vingerette for flavoring, four cucumber slices, and one tiny wedge of green pepper.
For refreshment I have procured a single twelve ounce can of soda; I don’t rightly recall what brand.
Before leaving my apartment I grab a fork to eat my salad with and a spoon for my yogurt. An hour and a half later I am at work, my office/cubicle a non-descript, lacking atmosphere industrial box.
I am six ounces into my soda and still waiting for the caffeine buzz, when I reach for my fork to eat my strawberries with. Upon opening my lunch pail and firmly grasping the fork[2], after looking down upon said fork, my brain registering that I indeed held a fork that as I pull it forth my fork has become a spoon.
I pause- how could I have been so self-assured that I had indeed grasped and produced said fork when indeed; in all truth I have produced a spoon instead?
It occurs to me only then that things are not as they first appear to be, at least in regards to my day beginning… which is all the more proof that the last place on earth I want to be is here in this place, my office cubicle, with all its sterile, industrial, colorless, lifeless, walls surrounding me. Indeed, at this moment who has the better deal; my brother, constrained as he is within a two by four box buried six feet under the ground, or me in my current six by six office cubicle, simply waiting for the dirt to be thrown in my face?
At least he has had the common courtesy to be dead first.
Here I am, almost waiting to die, as the second hand mercilessly cuts away another second of a life and a time I can never truly recover from or even fully fathom.
See what I mean, I write crazy stuff like that all the time. It just sort of hits me, puts me in a trance. The thing is my mind has always been this way ever since my brother’s funeral, always wandering, always separating… always leaving my body and leaving the real ‘me’, behind.
This has to be a ‘maybe,’ it just has to be.
What else could it be?
[1] This would be the act or process of dissociating: the same as the state of being dissociated. It can also refer to the separation of personality or discrete mental processes, as in from the mainstream of consciousness and or societies prescribed ‘normal’ behavior.
[2] There is a Russian folk tale where a young knight, returning from a long journey comes to a fork in the road and sees a menhir (standing stone or marker) with an inscription that read, “If you ride to the left, you will lose your horse, if you ride to the right, you will loose your head…”if you ask me this is all the more reason to travel straight ahead.
S.M. Muse 