My sister's Death

The envelope was eight inches long, four inches wide and eight ounces, tops and smelt like dust.  Don’t let the sound fool you: the sound it made when it slipped unnoticed through my fingers.  It was the sound of lead, clanking on tile, the sound of a plate breaking on hardwood. 

Dead.  Killed in a driving accident.  A driving accident?  She didn’t even have a car off at college.  An error, they had the wrong address.  The room was turning, and I realized I was shaking my head.  No way. 

Dead.  It was instantaneous.  She didn’t feel any pain.  The corner of the envelope had folded over on the floor, still open where it had dropped limp and empty now, its only sheet of paper, with its neat official type and stamp wilted and lifeless in my left hand. 

Dead.  We offer you our deepest regret and consolation in these difficult times.  Some other family must be missing out.  This was for them after all.  It couldn’t be.  They had got the address and stamp right, an American flag.

 

Outside, the lights turned back to green.  Inside nothing changed.  But cars went past.  I left the letter on the table.  For the next four hours I heard those five simple lies: she was dead, she had died in an instant, killed as the car ran the red light and hit her, they were sorry. 

“Don’t walk away” trailed down from my room, in a faded soft sort of way, the way a green breeze floats down on an afternoon when no one’s home and the windows are all open.  The way it gets in, so you don’t notice, in your hair, in your eyes, in your ears and in your mouth and you feel it and breathe it. 

“Don't walk away, and leave me without a reason, when there's too much to say.”  It’s just like a summer breeze dry and floating and silently getting everywhere like dust, covering your photos, your drawings, all that’s left of you.  

Author's Note

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