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IFComp 2023: My Brother; The Parasite, October 7, 2023So easy to hate. Orients your entire world. Gives you something to hold onto as you slowly lose everything. Because it’s deserved. Because you know what it is to suffer undeserved, so you have to believe in, if not justice, simply gravity, inescapable crushing weight sucking us all down. So easy to hate, because you no longer trust love, that there is even such a thing, colorless gaze of simply decay, nothing behind it but parasites.
They found your brother, “A bloated, rotting corpse. A parasite-ridden body. A centerpiece for nightmares. I’m sure you have enough of those already, her eyes say. When was the last time you felt safe in your own skin?” How you’ve, not always, you can’t stop thinking about then, known him. How you’ve snapped pencils in your hand wishing he would see in the mirror. How you’ve shocked awake at midnight. What you’ve wanted to drown, that there may emerge some part of your soul not sunken. “I don’t have to do this. I can go home right now, call the station and tell them to cremate the body. It’s not my fault he’s gone. / And I don’t need closure. I need him scrubbed from my memory with bleach and steel wool.” Don’t need closure, don’t need closure, need to believe there is a me that can still open up…
Looking at him, no, the text corrects you, the body, “There should be nothing left but venom.” But you want to be more than venom! You were never like this, you have never liked this. What if it is true that in the revulsion there is pity, in the hate there is, there is, what it overwrote, what you want to cherish like honesty, “Because I do miss you, but not you, I miss the part of you that taught me how to tie my shoes or drive a car. I miss when you were sweet to me. When you pretended to be. / And it’s not a question of mourning. Because you’re my brother. I’ll always mourn you, there will always be a piece of me that’s missing now that you’re dead. Maybe that means you aren’t dead at all. / And it’s not a question of love. I love you more than anything and anyone in this world. It’s unconditional. It’s maddening. I wish I could rip out the love I have for you.” Because at the end of the cycle of crying, your body loosens, your breath deepens, you remember the, you’ve forgotten it felt like this, desire to embrace, to love through the.
Because everything else is buried, why must you this inclination? Why is there never a gone that hurts you less than everyone else? Just because we desperately want to go doesn’t mean we want everything to go, just like that. “Age 18. I’d gotten accepted into a big name university, scholarship and all. My chance at freedom. (Three months earlier, Mom got diagnosed with lung cancer. You argued we both needed to be there to support her. And maybe if things were normal and nice, I would’ve agreed. But they weren’t, so I didn’t.) / She died before I could visit, so I never did. If I never come back, she’s not really dead. / (Well, I’m here now. I took too long and now everyone but me is gone, but I’m here.)” You are here, and everybody else just leaves, how is it fair they keep taking part of you to the grave, yet you still remain haunted by all you cannot, will not bury.
Not closure, but a shoulder, that tears might bloodlet in the warmth, keep your blood from freezing over. Because it keeps freezing over. Because it is so easy to hate, gives you someone to hold onto as you slowly lose everything. “He is dead. I am no less alone.”
