[Kaimee]: 5.Mixed Poetry&Prose.Ben

Why isn't somebody screaming?

So, hello all. I'm not even really writing this to any of you, I'm just writing it because it's raining too slowly and no one's screaming and they should be.
My eldest brother died, awhile ago. A week, or two weeks, or three, I don't really know. On the 11th of August, he was in a car crash.
We don't really know what happened, no one saw the crash except a truck driver who doesn't remember and can't tell the police anything useful from his hospital bed.
It doesn't really matter, we don't really care exactly what happened.
It's just that he's dead really, and no one's standing there screaming at the sky, which is steadily pattering down all gentle and slow sounding, and it's driving me insane. You'd think it'd thunder and pour down and crash against the ground and a little bit of the horror and goddamn shock of this all could beat itself out just a little violently in the rain. Just a little bit.
Just a little fucking goddamn miniscule bit of how wrong this is should be making the sky revolt or something.
But it isn't, it's all coming slowly and gently, seeping in and all I want to do is fight it and you can't really, there's nothing to do, it's rain.
My Brother is dead, and he shouldn't be. He didn't fade peacefully, his life didn't slowly ebb away. In one fucking moment something happened and it was violent, and it crashed around and the world turned upsidedown and it tore whatever made him Him away and it didn't do so calmly, it didn't do so in time, it did it in one second.
And that was it.
And I feel like I should be yelling up into the sky. I feel like my voice should be hoarse and torn from my throat and rain should come down so hard it stabs into me and just a little bit of that violence should be ecchoed in his passing, "his passing", christ, his death. His destruction. His ceasing to exist. His body being ripped up and crushed and broken. His flesh becoming cold.
But it isn't. It's quiet and common place, and we're greeting people at the door and making cups of tea, and staring out the window while we make conversation through aching throats.
My brother died, and is dead, and every bit of him that was is gone. And the world itself is wearing this mask of ordinary and going about its business calmly and boringly, and raining steadily and peacefully. As if nothing had happened. As if there weren't something broken there now.
His face, when we saw him, was unharmed. His lips had been set differently by people who didn't know how he smiled, but his face itself was calm and ordinary.
Like this soft and steady fucking rain, when there should be lightning lashing angrily across the sky. It shouldn't be like this.


Harsh and Brittle and Burningly Bright

I'm not going bowling tonight because the crowd they gathered for me are people I think I'd try to throttle. Ex boyfriends, new girlfriends, spare men, loose women, the sluts and dregs and bastards who make up my acquaintance.
I'm not going bowling because it doesn't move fast enough for me. It isn't furious enough for me. Furious, that's what I am.
This sparkling, brittle, hard laughing burning fury, I feel a hundred million years away from you all and I feel mean and nasty with it.
I want to hurt you. I understand that you really all just mean for the best, but holding reality at arms length I watch
myself crack horrible jokes about coffins and laugh harshly in people's faces, moving too fast and god, I can't say furious there, how I hate hollywood.
Lying in bed in the dark moves faster. And the dark moves faster.
I don't mean sex, although some sex might match this feeling, come to think of it. I want to hurt myself. I don't want secret little scars on my arms, and pulled down cuffs.
I mean me, the bit of me that wants to cry, and every one of you that wants to hug me and comfort me and pat me and say "You let it all out now dear."
Ok, let it all out? You sure? Fine. I want to slash at you with anger and shake everyone who tries to hug me.
That's not so true, really I just want to fall in a heap on the ground and never move again. But I'm watching this crystalline creature wearing my face stride harshly around screaming in people's faces and partying and dancing and riding this furious fucking high that's actually the lowest low I've ever felt,
I'm watching her and she just wont stop. And she's going on high speed screeching through everything and laughing that high bitter, brittle laugh and I'm waiting for her to break, or to break someone.
Because I'm watching her and she smells like danger and anger and drunkeness and I'm so sure she'll hurt someone soon. I'm so sure she's already hurting herself really, because what's the point of being brittle if you can't stab yourself with the broken pieces?


His Hands

I don't think I can explain to you his hands. They were beautiful, and I don't suppose I really noticed it for years. I was too busy being busy.
They were fragile and bird-like, in a family built all of muscle and mud specked men, all home from playing football with boots on the table and deep cracking laughs. He didn't laugh so much, sometimes he did I guess, a yelp of excitement, I can hardly hear it now.
But his hands, when he got excited, when something captured his attention or his imagination or his interest, his hands spoke like a song. And it sounds silly saying it, feminine somehow. But his hands were so elegant and graceful, and I remember them always as if he were holding them trying to work out some puzzle.
I remember him in snapshots of time, because I don't suppose I really looked at him much over the past few years, only in quick glances. And then away again.
I remember a thin bright boy dressed up in sleeves far too big, with quickly moving hands illustrating some obscure point that lit up his eyes. I remember him sort of blurred and on a slant, as if the photo in my mind were accidental. Most of the moments I remember of him were accidental.
The quietest I've ever seen his hands was in a silent grandmotheresque floral room, with candles that must just have been lit by someone unnoticed who went in before us. The wicks were only just turning black.
His hands were white, and they were folded in some way that made them look heavy, although Im still not sure how. I was too scared to touch them as my family shook his coffin with sobs and made him seem to move and breathe. I couldn't touch them until he looked dead, and he still didn't, even then. It felt wrong to touch him, because I never did, no one really did. I imagined a clammy, plasticene touch. I did touch him in the end. Two fingertips to the skin on the back of his hand, quickly, as we left the room.
His skin shifted, when I thought it would be solid and stiff. It was cold and it shifted, and I thought that they must have just wheeled him out of refridgeration. There must be a hidden door to take him through, him and the person who lit the candles.
When we were small I remember once in winter I paid him all the money I had in the world and asked him to catch a tiny bird for me. It's strange now that nothing reminds me of him so much as those birds. I can see him crouched in the grass and beautiful little hands poised to catch one. He never did, and I can see a tiny cold Ben frowning in concentration, snapshots again in my mind.
Sometimes I see his eyes all locked in on himself recently as he got excited over a new point and somehow couldn't share it, we were all too busy with our lives. His hands still danced with eagerness to tell us this thing, but I hadn't really looked at them in awhile, I couldn't tell you now what his nails looked like or anything.
I remember a few months ago I got a new flute, and he was so interested, I sat with him and showed him how to blow into it. He sounds child-like, the way I remember him. He was twenty-two, older than me. But what I remember about him was how gentle and curious he was, and how his hands seemed to dance and jump in the air, and how he always wanted to share everything he knew.
And I'll remember being too busy.

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Piece © Kate-Aimee Conrick. All rights reserved!