count your losses, wars, and fears; duncan
Oct 5, 2016 13:43:29 GMT -5
Post by heather - d2 [mylee] on Oct 5, 2016 13:43:29 GMT -5
vii. owen bowers-fox
People that have survived past reapings have said that the sound of their own name now causes their throat to tighten, even if the context is a simple greeting.
I have instead become numb to the sound of my own definition.
My name called now elicits no response— even Tweed’s voice calming in my ear does not send the same spark it once did down my spine. No, when my name was pulled from a crystal ball like the fortune of the poor man’s fate, it became the last time I was ever to hear that name and remember who I had aspirations to be.
When Owen died, I did not lose my brother.
I lost nothing.
But the world lost an artist, a great mind, a boy with a cause never to be fulfilled. He loved deeply and he fought with a sharpened tongue but like the passing of every season, his time closed with smoke taking the place of a fire flickering out.
I had thought that then, the light in myself would be reignited, and that my own heart would grow to feel the absence his left behind but I was soon to realize this was too great a task for even I. Alone, maybe it would have been possible. Perhaps isolation would have once played the role of savior in allowing me the time it would take to heal the wounds that one could never wish or want to see. But instead, I was left with a brother who spat in my face whenever I addressed him by name. Instead of brotherhood repaired by grief, I was handed Owen’s splintered casket and asked if I could feel the wood cutting my skin—
“Do you ever feel pitiful knowing that he died for you when it was the last thing you ever deserved , Duncan?”
No.
“I never—”
His fists clench, his jaw locks, and his voice drops to a nearly inaudible whisper, “I dare you to finish that thought.”
If I had said no, he would have slit my throat on the spot; if I had said yes, he would have called me a liar, and worse, been correct.
So instead I say nothing and leave him to simmer in silence, his blood threatening to boil over with every passing second until the tension dissipates into a final statement of command, “Duncan, you’re breaking the ground where we’ll bury him.”
He wanted me to feel Owen’s bones breaking through the skin of my own hands so that maybe I could imagine what it would have felt like to deliver the final blow.
I did not understand why he was asking me to fill his grave with hatred when Owen had so long lived a life of awe. For once, I began to consider which one of us truly had my brother’s deceased intentions in mind.
--
When I stand over his grave now, I do not feel his bones breaking.
I do not see his art in color tacked upon the wall.
I see my innocence buried there— I have no more to give.
“You were no martyr, Owen Bowers-Fox.”