Blue eyes. Dimples, a mole on his right cheek. The smell of puppies squirming in the basement. Checkerboard, bright red, black. A little lake and a little grass and a scrawny little mustang he brought back from out west and was trying to train. We saw them every day on our way to school, passed right by in our car. Our parents, playing cards together. Laughing upstairs in the kitchen. Our little sisters, playing dolls together, laughing. A torn up couch in the basement. The scent of musk, like there’s a leak somewhere, like this place has been flooded before, like it’s been damaged by water. A pastor, complete with a giant cross on a silver chain, telling me he was plagued by demons for a long time.

His mother in the lunchroom, serving beef and noodles before that rope was swinging in an empty hotel room. His mother at his funeral, holding onto me for dear life, her eyes squinched tight shut and water rushing down her face like it will never stop, me not sure what to say, just whispering, “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” wanting to tell her that the pain will stop sometime, but not wanting to lie, not knowing if it ever will or not. A picture of his grave on his little sister’s website, bright and glinting in the sunlight. Flowers always there. Pretty ones. Not the sad kind. Not roses. Orange tulips. And family pictures without him in them. Today, his mother in the lunchroom, dishing up turkey and noodles, saying hello to me and smiling, thin lipped but the corners of her eyes still crinkle up exactly the same as BEFORE.