show me how you self destruct; gaby

I find it ironic that loss is subjective while death is not.

We can trick the mind into believing death is a falsity, but when the fog has cleared and the ashes refuse to shield the world in smoke it becomes very clear who has been buried beneath the ground and who is standing on that ground which is now considered broken and simultaneously new.

However, lost and missed are words that can tickle the tongue or burn them when spoken in regards to the end of a life lived for better or worse.

I do not know if my sister was lost or missed by the world or if it was truly anyone’s business to find out. To each their own was an idea rejected by my mother and embraced by myself, for each of us in the household had a different stance on what it meant to have a house devoid of Stella Summit.

From my own perspective, the world had still not realized that it had been stripped of anything at all. Besides, one life lost to the world is simply another second passing; another speck on the timeline of no significance. The only reason the world has become aware that it has lost anything at all is because we use tombstones to make the places we have buried our dead. Graves are nothing more than blemishes and scars upon smooth skin— defining and unwanted but never permanently forgotten.

I believe that sometimes the thoughts of those we have lost do slip from our minds. Perhaps this is nothing more than the mind’s automatic way of coping with that which it does not understand, but for the time when this knowledge manages to fall to the wayside, we are able to go about our lives believing that our souls have remained unmarred.

It is the greatest sin one can commit to die still believing that the soul in their chest has remained in tact throughout the span of a lifetime.

I do not hold the opinion that the soul is the key to identity, for if I did this world would be full of nothing more than dead men in hollow minds pacing the earth to waste time. This being stated, I have not been able to identify what aspect of ourselves that foundationally defines who we were if we were to be stripped down to nothing but namesake. I have heard mind, body, and soul proposed— soul ruled out and only two options were to be left; however, both are flawed and fitting to human nature. Perhaps we are nothing more than the shifting consequences of our decisions.

If soul is to truly be ruled out due to our own moral infidelity, body is often turned to as the ultimatum. However, every scar sets us apart from the human we were the day before, so how am I to say that I am who I was a year, a day, or a month ago? This body has changed and so have I, so along with my sister it appears to me that I have buried every past self alongside her.

It is a shame that these are the graves that remain invisible.

These two points eliminated I am only left to consider my mind as a defining factor. The description was one that appeared to fit at first glance, for are we not the thoughts that pass from mind to tongue and back into the world? But then, what is to be said for the lost minds that cannot complete the cycle? What happens to the minds that have long since stilled though the body carries on?

(“I think; therefore I am.”)

I pray that I leave the world in a manner different from my sister, for she was waning thin long before the girl from three had managed to make her heart finally stop. I am sure that her mind was gone before then— how horrid it must have been. I wish to be gone instantaneously, perhaps through a shot to the heart or something just as dramatic but still unseen.

Anything would be acceptable, as long as I did not have to think about lingering consequences for any longer than a moment.

She breaks my silence with an answer to my question that is shallower than the grave at her feet, “My father.”

I suppose she was a believer in explanations left unspoken; however, I am not.

But viewing this graveyard from her perspective I could arrive at understanding the story she has not brought herself to tell, for what manner of arriving here matters at the end of all things— for are our lost all not buried the same depth under? Her father may be gone and my sister as well, but certainly they did not share a death defined the same.

I do not bring myself to interrogate the writing on the backside of the tombstone.

“I lost my sister— Stella Summit. Four years ago next week.”

Perhaps by then I would be buried alongside her instead of dangling her story over the edge of interest like it could spark anything other than sympathy.