a requiem; jonas

Paper planes and paper people.

Torn cuts and bruised ribs we lived in a city of folds and wrinkles, scars across our skin and we were ripping with the passing breeze, all on the weight of that paper airplane and its paper wings. I’d frame it on the thin walls if I could, if they wouldn’t give way and crumble beneath fingertips that were anything but delicate, I’d build my house of stone, if he’d rather I would.

But then again tombstones don’t talk and neither do I, not when the letters engraved match the cracks in my skin—I’ve pressed my palm to stone one time too many for it to hurt anymore. Rough and jagged like heart’s edges I am no longer afraid of fire and brimstone because I’ve found it in the morning sky set ablaze by the sun that loves it most.

I loved my brother until he set me on fire, kindling in my limbs spitting sparks through my fingertips—I’ve never reached for the extinguisher.

I spent nights flying paper planes into paper flames—no one missed receipts and wills anyway.

I, Jonas Stoddard, do hereby give in my last will and testament any tangible property to

Bullets in the paper gun, finger on the trigger and I’ll no longer run.

The only day I did not visit his grave was the second anniversary of his passing, for the day was spent with paper and pen, tracing out the letters of an inborn name on a certificate of death I promised I wouldn’t throw to the flames. The first had been folded along the lines of a cross, too pure for the dirty ash and cracked wood it disintegrated upon. Sacrificial lamb free of spot he was not, but forever he remained my brother.

Time of death exactly unknown but we remained left my heart in stone—Fionnbharr, still can’t finish the name, spelling it Stoddard isn’t the same. Tearing off the corner left the same void that his tombstone left in my heart—a death certificate wasn’t meant to be written twice.

But neither was a will, and in the same fire red sunlight I sat at our desk, tracing the details of one death and the plan of another. Etching his death to the minute was ripping the nails from his coffin to reveal withering flesh and brittle bones, a meander down a paper lane and everyone would be torn in the end.

Time of death: two years prior—minutes didn’t mean anything, anyway.

Cause of death: dying.

Responses are automatic now, fragile hands fighting the urge to fold paper planes to fix the paper cuts that line my skin like the burning of a sunlit sky that refuses to set, and with the same finely crossed hands I pull a second piece of paper to the desk—second time is the charm for all things paper perfect.

The last will and testament of Jonas Jael Stoddard:

I, hereby wish that all of my remaining possessions be burnt, so that no one can make paper planes out of the works of a paper brain.

Hands that cannot fight the urge one second longer fold the second paper until wings rest against fingertips, the same motion repeated on the first and disappointment crowns them off. Poke a pencil through the paper until string can be pulled through and knotted at both ends, the paper ends of paper people tied together like there’s really an end to it all.

Paper people will always fly paper planes because they can’t touch the thin sky themselves.

People are greedy and so are we—so am I as I walk out the door, two paper and a string tying me to this ground I no longer see with the same delicate eye. A blunt edge in the world is all I need, and save that one day I refused to press my palm to a paper grave I had etched a path into the plane beneath my feet, a direction to death and I’ve laid to rest the idea that dead men walking can’t live.

Press a palm to his gravestone and it feels the same as the day I set my hand on his shoulder the day his name hit the air—it’s cold in the upper atmosphere. The same reason no one lives there is the same as to why he didn’t return, lost between cold and dying he never knew the difference.

It’d be a fragile lie to say I knew the same, but then again I was already tied to his paper plane.

Pull the wooden stake from my heart and place it behind the grave, paper planes tied to his paper place and forever we’d be tied by the notice of death—(“I, Jonas Jael Stoddard—”)

What a tragedy it would be to spell his name in a way just the same.

Three steps back and I’ve turned from his grave, I’ll see it in the same light again, anyway. The sun will set us ablaze in the guise of love, but in the end all we’ll see are paper rays that threaten to burn our paper planes. But never the matter, for ink smears in fire or water, destroyed in the end, whatever the cause. Time and cause of death didn’t mean a thing when the dead could walk and those alive weren’t allowed to show it. My father said family ran deeper than blood, but with paper veins it didn’t seem that it should, not in this city of wrinkles and folds, apt to tear if you stared too long.

Away from his grave now and I find the sun sinking over the horizon, preparing to strike the match of a morning past while I set into motion a night I could not prepare for.

Maybe I wouldn’t fly paper planes into paper flames if I knew it’d kill me in the end, but then again I was willing to pull the paper trigger on a paper gun, only because I knew that I would not run.