I’ve been mourning my little sister for 23 years now.

Not that I realized it.

Dad let the secret slip some time ago, but I didn’t really believe him.

About the blood and the little body and the bathroom floor.

I was still a kid when he told me, but I’m not a kid anymore.

So I felt it was time to ask mom. Adult to semi-adult.

Not about the blood and the little body and wrapping it up in a towel.

But just the base facts. Facts I somehow knew already.

Floating around me, in my shadow, in my dreams, in my feelings,

in-between my mother cigarette stained fingers, in-between breaths.

In some of the ways things turned out.

How I turned out.

She answered them, not seeming too bothered.

In fact it was a good talk, a talk I’m glad we had.

Something she had kept to herself, but now we shared it.

And I think she realized just how much we had been sharing all along.

For that I’m sorry mom, maybe I should’ve shared it sooner.

Since I’d been carrying it around with me anyway.

I wish that was the end of it. But it was just a start.

23 years in the back of my mind, suddenly in the forefront.

All my memories, rewritten and colored over.

As if they’d always been stained that way.

A hole in a shirt you just noticed and now you keep fingering.

And now answers don’t seem like nearly enough.

The hole just keeps widening.

I probably could’ve asked about the blood and the little body and deciding to go to the hospital with it.

Moms tough. Tough enough for that.

I’m not though.

And so I’ll never know her name.

If there even was a name.

That’s something that I’ll never ask.

Couldn’t then. Won’t now.

I don’t need anymore holes.

But I think that if I did, it would ring in my ears as familiar as my own.

Something I should’ve been calling my whole life.

I’d realize I’ve always known it, always had it, the little ball in my throat.

I want to keep it there.

Where it hurts.

But I don’t know why it does