Between Bruises & Blooms

Some deaths
feel wrong
before the page
even finishes them.

Shade
was one of those.

Because brothers
are supposed
to come home.

They are supposed
to survive
the rebellion.

Supposed to tease you
afterward.

Supposed to stand
somewhere
in the future
you are fighting
so desperately
to reach.

He had already
been lost once.

Already become
a ghost
in Mare's mind

before returning
alive.

That should
have been enough.

Stories should not
be allowed
to give someone back

just to teach you
how much worse
losing them twice
can hurt.

But there he was—

proof
that miracles
could happen.

Her brother.

Alive.

Fighting.

Still hers.

Until suddenly

he wasn't.

And I think
that is why
some fictional deaths
stay lodged
under the ribs.

It is not only
who died.

It is every future
that died
beside them.

Every conversation
that will never happen.

Every ordinary day
they should have
been allowed
to grow old enough
to complain about.

Shade was supposed
to come home.

Sometimes

that sentence
is the whole grief.