the walk home after a funeral (Patreon)

The thunder is gone, and the lightning. The hammer on steel. The feeling of chaos and violence. It's all gone. I'm not sure what's left. The rain is hard and loud in its own way, but it is also peaceful. It makes the road a darker red. It changes the color of my t-shirt. The skin on my arms. Simon's hair.

When we reach the spot where the ocean comes right up to the road, I take Simon's hand and lead him down to the water. The sand is wet and cakes to our shoes.

I start to wade out into the water. When I'm up to my knees I can hear him behind me, splashing a bit to catch up. The water is higher on my brother, but we're both soaked through anyway. The salt is clean and cold. I don't know what I thought I would feel, standing here. Close to her somehow? But no. This isn't where she died. This isn't how she died. 

Still. The ice cold. The salt.

Simon is looking down at something, and then he reaches out his hand, and grabs a jellyfish by the soft safe dome. He pulls it trailing up out of the water, still dripping even in the rain, and then he wraps the stinging lashes around the bare skin of his left arm. His eyes go wide but he doesn't make a sound. I have a feeling like I've seen this before.

I reach out and lift the jellyfish off his skin, which is flashed red now, with long snaking bright lines. I want to throw it as far into the sea as I can, but I don't. Simon is still looking at me. So I lay the creature across my own skin. Wrap my left arm with it the way he did. 

It is a pain that almost sings. It is so sharp and so immediate. I think I get lost in it, because the next thing I know, Simon is pulling the thing off my arm and throwing it back into the sea. 

My arm looks just like his. We match. Red vines. Red snakes and tendrils. Sea creatures. Red chains for cinder blocks. Maybe we'll scar the same. Maybe we'll be brother and sister forever, and never leave one another alone like this. He'll never have to sit at my funeral. I'll never have to sit at his. He takes my arm and puts it under the salt water. It doesn't help, but I love him for it.

The bright pain wrapped around my arm is throbbing like a sound.

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