spring melt /av & duke, pre 89th

I forgot it'd be like this, the spring.

It comes as it always does, grass poking through snow banks, rain washing the last of it out until one morning we wake up and the snowdrops are bloomed, missing petals here and there from the March rains.

I've been back from the victory tour for nearly two months when I come downstairs to Duke packing our old wicker picnic basket on the kitchen table. I don't say anything as he works. I just sit at the table with the same cup of coffee I brewed nearly three hours ago and I watch him.

We used to have picnics as a family. We'd disappear for a whole afternoon to the riverbank to eat Duke's baking and mom's egg sandwiches.

It's been a couple of years since we did that. I've been tired lately, since I got back from the tour, sometimes it feels as if I can't rest. I miss the train rocking me in the night, I miss the incomplete feeling of not being home. I still feel it here, that hallow resting on my ribcage, clinging tight.

Maybe I'm not the same anymore.

Except I don't have to ask Duke to pack me an extra sandwich, he just does. I've always been hungry, he knows that. He knows me.

But I look at long limbs and hands that he's still growing into and I don't know if I know him.

Just like that, I'm sad again, dejected as we set out from Victor's Village, our lunch under Duke's arm. I have the baseball mitts that Dad got us years ago, the leather is soft from use but I can't remember the last time I wore it. There's been this big secret between us for so long, sometimes I wonder if Duke can feel it pushing us apart.

Things are awkward between us, they have been for awhile, but I match my pace to his as we walk anyway. It's easy to be with Duke, simple to walk alongside my little brother. More than any place, him and Billie have always felt like home.

If I'm lost, it's them that I look for; I don't need anything else.

"This is nice," I start, then falter. I'm not sure what I am past that. Happiness isn't quite how I'd label how I'm feeling but in this exact moment, the pain is a little less too. "We haven't done this kinda thing in awhile."

I pull a baseball out of one of the mitts and toss it in the air as we walk catching it deftly. I can't help but think about my throwing knives as I do so, can't help but remember what the handles felt like in my grasp as I released them and sent them hurtling towards a target.

I wince.

"I don't gotta leave again until the 89th so we can do this a lot this summer."