i just sighed (and the universe replied) // arnelle reaction

The worst sensation in this entire wretched universe is the feeling of his hand slipping out of mine.

All in a moment, where there was once the warm, rough comfort of our palms curled together - the reassuring certainty where his long fingers nestle into the grooves of my knuckles like the cogs of some perfectly crafted machine - suddenly he pulls away; and I am left cold, in heart and hope as much as in hand. The entirety of that day, and the days since, has been defined by that feeling alone. All my despair, all my loneliness, it is sourced in that one, simple gesture.

-- We stand in the Square. The wind is cold but the bodies packed so closely are unbearably hot. My stomach is as heavy with the weight of dread as my tongue is with the weight of the razor blade that sits there.

And then the rhythmic syllables that make up his name are called-

Jenoah- and it's the escort's voice, it's my father's voice, it's his own voice, it's my voice-

And I feel his heartbeat jump in the frail echo in his fingertips.

And I feel my own breath catch as if it has been snagged like a scarf on my sheer disbelief at the situation.

And then I feel his hand slip out of mine, and the world ends.

-- That night, the house seems  so much darker, and a chill pierces the walls and floors like it never has before. My palm burns still with the ghost of that instant, terrible friction. I hold it to my face, whispering into it like a shell, wishing I could hear, like a sea breeze, the echo of his own voice whispering back from inside.

From the next room, I am sure I can hear someone crying. After all, why shouldn't they? Jenoah's absence is like a hole in the floor, a chunk torn through right to the very foundations. Beneath it, down into the abyss that he's left behind, a storm rages. The wailing I hear through the wall simply matches the wailing of the wind. Nevertheless, my own eyes are painfully dry, dry as my lips and my skin - dry as his skin was as I felt it brush against my own as I lost my grip on him. I can't cry. I  can't bring myself to. Where my neighbour hears the wailing and repeats it, all I can relay is the emptiness of the void itself.

-- I awake and it feels like I'm treading water up to my neck. My legs ache and my throat is a rasping sandpaper trap, and I realise I must have been shuddering and calling for my lost brother in my sleep all night. Desperately, I want to shake the feeling of the surface of the water which clings to my windpipe, and inadvertently I scratch at the spot where it sits like a piece of cold, fine wire wrapped slightly too tight. Despite my acute knowledge of what causes it, as I've felt the clutch of anxious fear and loneliness enough times before, there's no way I can shake it.

The house is still. No business today - our counterparts know it as well as we do. They mourn with us, bu their mourning can never be like ours. Like mine.

My mourning is quiet. Intense, yes, but quiet in its intensity. My mourning is in my vision, close to grey at the edges and slightly ut of focus. My mourning is in my hearing, my senses of taste and smell - all dulled. My mourning is in the tolling pain that sluggishly swirls in my head with such unbearable inertia. And it is in the ghostly feeling in my right hand, which I cannot bear to close into a fist, haven't closed willingly since the day before, that odd phantom sensation that something there is just... missing.

-- His interview is when I finally break.

He comes out looking smarter and more polished than he ever did at home. He doesn't smile, but his eyes sparkle as much as the make-up on his interviewer's cheeks. Is he proud? Is he happy? I close one I and try to superimpose the Jenoah that I know, the one with his old hat pulled low over his eyes, with his collar turned, the secret blade hidden within it known to only him, and me, and our family. I try and remember the boy whose voice at dinner made us all stop and turn to him, eager to hear the wise and wonderful things he had to say. But I can't. How he is on the screen, how I know he will be when the gong sounds and he goes sprinting off in less than a week's time - it's too distracting. I can't get past this polished tribute - literally too - that's been created in honour of the boy they plucked so effortlessly from his home, from our rooted home. How easily they pulled him up from us, and how easily they tugged his fingers away from mine.

In my ears there is a screaming that I can't block out. It's such a shock, after the bleak silence that's deafened me since the Reaping, that I buckle under its force. My head is exploding and imploding all at once - I am screaming, hurling threats at the screen which shows me a brother I no longer recognise, my hands shaking with the force of a bowstring just released, my heart a roaring landslide as it speeds up and dashes itself against my ribs.

The feeling of his hand leaving mine has become grating, and I want to claw at the skin of my palm, tear off the ghost that has been nursing there like a fat leech by blocking it out with pain. My knuckles  push out, bony idols to my uncontrollable rage, despair, fear - desperate fear. I can't stand it, I can't stand his absence and the presence of this new impostor projected into our home. The storm in the abyss swallows me, and I become it, a hurricane shrieking for justice. My family try to hold me down, try to speak reason to me. My lips are sore and foaming spit pours out of them as I scream. My eyes sting with the tears they've anticipated for a week.

And on screen, the audience applauds.

Jenoah raises his hand to wave-

(the hand that left mine, the hand that slipped away and took its owner with it)

The interviewer is already onto the next guest.

The world has moved on. Children will live or die, and the nation will move on. Jenoah will come home, or he won't. Will we move on? Will I?

As surely as I live, and breathe, and shriek his name at the bright television screen in front of my tear-blurred eyes,

I never will.