He had an imprint of her so much
He sees her even in a twilight

It’s like a dream as I stand there in the middle of the yard that isn’t much. It’s just a few bushes with a few blooming flowers, and the grass that covered most of the soil under my feet. I feel the cold morning breeze on my skin as I look around me, still in the haze of last night’s sleep.

Perhaps the calm sun is lulling me back to close my eyes and let me drift fully away. Its warm hue keeps telling me that it’s okay if I just stay still and let the world pass me by quickly and without any of its voices screaming at me to come back to a place I don’t want. It whispers with the breeze through the leaves of the trees - its rustling and its music - instead of the mechanical whine of the long lost world. And I’ve known so well how its notes play out that it almost hurts my bones, and that it almost crushes my chest.

Then I let it take me.

Instead of watching the clouds pass overhead and instead of watching the rays of sunlight, I close my eyes and listen to it. I hear the soft, careful beating inside of my chest, the proof the I am still alive, reminding me of the reason why I can breathe and experience these things in a simple garden in the middle of nowhere.

It makes me think of how she sings to me in the same tune as the morning dew, quiet and cool, as she loosely holds my fingers in her soft hand, as we trample over the brown, dead leaves that littered the ground. The crunch of each stem resonates to her melody as she hums peacefully, turning me around in an awkward dance between sister and brother.

Everything about it is quite personal. I can pretend that we are the only ones to exist at that moment, and I wouldn’t have to think of what lies beyond the gates of this house. This place is that one place left that I can truly call safe, my own little haven. Despite how it really looks, this is still my home.

I hear her call out to me. I hear her sweet voice through the collapsed rafters that now frames the kitchen and through the vines that embrace the few foundations left.

I smile silently and turn on my feet as I playfully kick stones and dirt. I feel the blades of grass brush against my ankles, cold but still alive like I am. Perhaps we’re some kind of family thriving together and a little battered yet still, we’re all here.

I hum her tune as I stroll through the path, towards the opening. I climb the hill of rubble around it in a memorized step, careful not to slip and fall. And I whisper when I get there, “I’m here.” I amble around the plants that have grown inside and been watered by rain through the hole in the roof, and sit at the far end of the table, stained, dirty, with a lump of bread waiting on broken porcelain.

“It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” I whisper.

I see her beside me. Her long hair waving slightly in the soft breeze, framing her kind, smiling face, as she says, “Hmhmm, it’s been a while since then.” She points her finger at my chest. “You’re still here and I’m proud of you.”

I remember then how I promised her, just right before she closed her eyes, surrounded by a sea of fire and the unimaginable, that I would live and that I can stand again after she let go of my fingers and left for good, along with most of everything.

I watched that very soil from the start, from when it still had her corpse, when I would still place dying flowers over her grave, from when it was one broad, barren land, to what it is now - a garden of Eden as I like to think.

“Hey, I thought you don’t want to remember. I thought you don’t go back to that place.”

I look at her and I smile and I whisper, “I just don’t want to forget you.”

It would have been better if I don’t realize that it isn’t real and she isn’t with me. No one is. But even if that is the case now, I can still smile through all this rubble as long as I can still remember what it was like when I still had my world.