the bridge between the skies

"the sky's too big not to share with others."

Pent-up frustration, coupled with exhaustion and a deep-rooted sense of guilt, had swallowed her into a state of megrim. Grief had filled her veins, clinging to her as if it were her only friend and she had known it all her life--in the manner one would know their name.

Lines filling her forehead, with her eyes drooped due to exhaustion and sleeplessness, she stood by the sidelines as dozens filled the expanse of the courtyard--place of weddings and a place of burial. She choked back the tears that threatened to pour out, to gush like a tap left running. All the villagers, like a tightly knit community, walked through, putting him down on Mother Earth; abandoning him, just like they abandoned so many before. Words were exchanged--as if that were all his worth, as if only a few words he deserved--and tears were shed; all while she stood, unflinching. With that, many dispersed, leaving him to the darkness of the soils. The very world he had laughed and stood high in now had swallowed him in raging silence.

She wanted to cry, yet she didn't. She wanted to scream, yet she didn't. Her mind and body were sworn enemies; her body forced her to turn her back, while her heart screamed betrayal--betrayal, because it seemed she had turned her back on him. Abandoned him.
Abandoned the very person who soothed her tears with his smiles.
Abandoned the very person who had stood by her side, while others left.

Yet what was there to do?
Time had set its course, and death had been on the horizon while they remained unaware.
Words she left behind--words she should have said--would never be heard. She would never again rest her head on his shoulder. Everything had faded since he breathed his last.

She walked onward. The only sound that echoed was her shoes against the brick path. Everything seemed so normal. The world hadn't stopped, it moved forward, it always did.
Her world though--
had seemed to have ended.
Her alternation of night and day had stopped. Her breath and her mind malfunctioned. Her world had come to a cruel halt.

And as she closed her eyes, she imagined him. Imagined him grinning as he took the upper hand in chess. Imagined him frowning in contemplation over the simplest of matters. Imagined his animated conversations, his warmth as he cuddled her during cold nights. Imagined him arguing--only to make her forget every lingering pain for just a heartbeat or more.
He had a shine to his face like no other. And a heart so kind, it could bend her into tears.
He was so much more than the world would ever know.
He was her brother. Her right-hand man.
All she desired now was the midnight cuddles and embraces. All she desired was just one... one sentence to him. one... hug. one... last moment together.

But... he was gone. His life's period, predestined, had finished; and so his life's pen dried, lifting up with multitudes of chapters left blank--left with only ifs. Left with only could have been.
"Whither to, brother?" she uttered, the tiny part of her wishing he could answer.
Wishing he could remain to be her compass--not leaving her to wander these terrifying terrains alone, and lost. Lost without a guide, and a companion.
A beat or more, and the only response she found was gloomy silence, cutting at her throbbing grief tenfold more--for now everything had truly sunk in.
He was gone, and he was never to return. Never was she to have even the tiniest bit of him.
It was as though fate had sneered at her, eyes full of hatred, throwing her into the deep, sinking ocean of life without a lifeline to hold onto.
She had lost her path. Lost her purpose.
Before she knew it, salty tears soiled her face--and her heart. As if those tears themselves intended to soil her heart with unyielding strength. As if to help her stand up and make a beautiful garden from the precious things she still had in her life. They weren't tears of complete defeat, rather they were tears of loss, tears of remembrance, and tears of lingering hope.

And it looked as if the skies took mercy; for they too shed glistening pieces of heavenly tears, making her look up, as it hit her: she hadn't been forsaken. She hadn't been abandoned.
His time had ended, but he lived--lived ever so earnestly in her heart. His words hadn't left her, nor had his memories. He had left her with pieces of him, pieces she would hold onto for the rest of her days. So when she gazed into the endless horizons of the sky, a tiny smile made its way through, as his voice gently scraped off the layers of hopelessness clinging to her,

"The sky is too big not to share with those on the other side," he once said, eyes wide in awe, looking far beyond.

And now she knew. She knew, truly, that the sky was big enough to share with her brother. That it was far from being a barricade, rather it was a bridge. A bridge between two worlds. A bridge between lost, yet still tenderly close souls.

It was big enough to share with those lost--and those to come.
So she smiled. And smiled.
For he hadn't left.
And he never would.
Sure, he wouldn't know all the things she wished she'd told him--but he would know this much: that she loved him, and that he too, loved her immensely.
And that he trusted her.
And so, she would trust her too. She would trust herself.

But for now, she would gaze toward the sky--not in loneliness,
but in silent peace, in silent knowledge that he was there, too.
For he forever would be.