phantom limb

i have all of these words and feelings about you, around you, toward you. without you.

you are torture. toxic. angry. bitter.

in pain.

i wouldn't say you were a limb cut off of me. it was more a slow wrenching of a limb. constantly painful. 

painful still.

you're out there. in the world. still full of anger and spreading your toxicity.

victim.

it hurts me. i think back to the times i miss you, and it is eons. lifetimes ago.  when i was small and we fell asleep holding hands. when we swam in your pool and had sleepovers at your house.

losing you is more than losing my sister, my oldest sister, my big sister. it is also losing the history you hold. 

oh, now i think of that small girl in her big sister's bed and my eyes sting with tears. my heart hurts. you were there. you knew.

it's not a losing of pain, cutting you out of my life, because i still feel it every day. it's a dark and thick pain; an undercurrent. while i might not think of you every day, i still feel the current connecting us.

which makes sense, because we are sisters.

does it ever go away?

i think sometimes it might, and that hurts even more. knowing you're out there, wondering just wondering always wondering.

i should have slapped you that day. that day in the sun next to your car, i should have slapped you. but at the last second i adjusted and shoved your shoulder instead.

"why don't you go cry over your dead dad's grave."

i should have slapped you.

our relationship (if you can call it that) should have ended years ago. it shouldn't have lasted as long as it did. but the boys. we kept you in our lives because of the boys. we wanted to be in their lives.

i still feel rage. and now immediate sadness. my eyes burn with unshed tears. they pool as i try to blink them away.

where did that big sister go? the one i held hands with as i fell asleep?

so much complicated grief.