One day, I will have forgotten how to stand, and then, I'll have no option but to let go, I fear. I will crumble, and you shall find me. In a heap. Alone and afraid, Beaten and maimed. Though what scares me most is, my memory will be gone. I won't know who you are, or why you're helping me. And I'll question, and I'll plead, With each, a little more, your heart will bleed. Yet you'll help me and hold. You'll strengthen the structure, and raise me so bold.
I'll see you and wonder - who? 'Cept I won't know the word for you.
He finds her in a puddle, finds her a mess. He kisses her forehead, and takes her to bed. How long did he leave her this time? One, two, three hours, tops. He knew he shouldn't leave her, but he couldn't resist. The appeal of the outside world, that inner voice chanting cease and desist. For once, he hoped they could be normal, so he'd forced himself not to worry at night. And now, here she was. Stuttering, and alone, a piece of paper crumpled in hand. Her cold, numb feet still covered in sand. A jolt in his heart, when he noticed the specks. The icy, fatal waves, lapping at her head. Escaped them, this time, and yet for how long? Their house on the beach, once a dream, now their damnation. And with each step, she went a little closer to her death.
One day, he'd come home and she would've drowned. Unfurled her fingers, pried out the scrap. Deliberate over reading it. Addicted to her snippets, the only connection left to the woman she'd once been. Before the disease had eaten away at her brain from the inside, caused her to forget. Piss herself, and try drowning, 'cause she could no longer remember how to master the waves. Was it urine, or ocean water this time? And how could he remind her that he loved her, when all his sister heard inside her head was the tick-tock of time?
"Hey," he spoke softly, inhaling the salt in her ear.
She'd stopped talking some two months before, but still he tried to rouse her. Couldn't accept why or how she only came alive when he wasn't here. How she remembered how to hold a pen, and love him, yet could never be here for him to tell her. He worried she was ashamed. Didn't think he'd want to wake up one day to find he'd grown helpless. A burden, though he rarely allowed himself to think that of her.
Laying her down, the brother read.At first, the rhyming had struck him as odd, but now, it just saddened him. Imperfect, and slightly off-tempo. Like his sister. Dangling over the edge, trying to get up, though never quite making it.
He peeled off her soaked clothes. Wrapped her hair in a towel, and changed her. Now, if only he could change himself. And then he sat her down, and, the way he did every night, introduced himself. Told her of who they were, and more importantly, of who they'd once been.
Promised himself that next time, he'd lock the door, so she'd be safe from the waters. Only he'd said that last time, as well.
The brother didn't think of them as attempts, because that would imply success and failure. It would force him to confront himself over why he kept leaving the door unlocked. Why he read these botched goodbye letters, and kept them in the bottom drawer, like snapshots of his sister's decline. Told himself that the reason why he kept leaving her alone was he hoped for catharsis. Hoped that one day, he'd catch her not as she was, but as she once had been. Sharp, beautiful, brilliant. Except he never came home in time, and in truth, he was afraid. Didn't want to speak to his sister, for fear of what she'd say to him. Learning that she hated him. Blamed him. Waited for him to do more than just drape her in warm clothes.
He told himself all this, but in truth, the reason he kept leaving was he was tired. He couldn't look after her for long periods of time no more. And with each day that passed, his patience fell just a little bit shorter than the last. He worried that one day, there'd be none left. And what would happen to his sister, then? What would happen to him?
The scrap of her heart still clutched in his hand, the brother watched his sister sleeping. Did her breathing seem shallow? Was that a shiver that crossed over her heart? Could she hear him? Was she scared? And where did she go, when she wasn't here? Where did her mind go, when it wasn't writing him snippets?
When the hour got late, he went to hide the piece of paper with the rest, and told himself he'd gift them to his sister, if she ever came back. Took off his clothes, then moved on to sleep. Dreamt of the day when he didn't come home in time, when she didn't remember to come out of the water. The last snippet, the rest of his life. In his sleep, the brother cried.