oh, sister, I am sorry. your eyes are sunken and your skin is bruised. your lips are chapped, your nailbeds bitten raw. your husband's hand on your waist is a ghost's touch held by the band on your left ring finger and I-
I got on the train, Su. Nevermind your tears, nevermind the plea you could not shape with words, nevermind your fingers on the pulse point of my wrist. "stay", you'd said, as you have always done, dictionary in hand and baby teeth yet lodged in your jaw. "don't go where i cannot."
I step through a wardrobe and you follow, damned be reason. I slay a wolf and you follow, I cling to the little ones and you follow, I am crowned and you follow, I am-
I go past a lamp post, and you follow, damned be dread. I go to a train station and you follow, trembling hands and tender heart. I go, and I go, and I go, and you follow. Sun of my skies. Light of my life.
are we too old for stories, now? ten-and-four and ten-and-three, budding bodies and steel bones, we are cast from our home. i hold the little ones until i drown in them. you grip your skirts until no iron can press the shape of your palms from them. and you have ever been, cruelly reasonable and logically callous.
say you, glass shard eyes and rouge-red lips: we are english. we are children. she thinks she has found a magical land in the upstairs wardrobe.
say I, trembling hands and coiling guts: we are narnian. we are monarchs. if she's not mad and she's not lying, then logically she must be telling the truth.
my sister Susan, beautiful as folk tales are and twice as sharp, did you intend every invitation you took for me to twist the knife a godly animal once thrust into my guts? perhaps it was the way your eyes turned blue, or the sound of your laughter losing its bells. perhaps it was just my trembling fingers at the back of your legs, drawing stocking lines where no stockings had ever lain.
the line came out shaking, and you rubbed it off until your skin cried red. the hem of your dress still dripped wet when you left that day, turning on heels too narrow for you to walk in.
do you remember? it took you days to come home, and mother wailed for all of them. you crawled into my bed that night, as you did when we were parents to our little ones, those terrible months. your head on my shoulder, your breath in my ear, I held you until morning.
your mouth in my throat, eyes heavy with sleep, tongue heavy with champagne: we are here now. we must make the best of it. he cannot have all our lives, and all our joys. i wish you would laugh again.
doesn't little lucy, shrieking mouth and tumbling legs, laugh enough for us all?
lucy's manic. if she didn't laugh she'd cry.
i think sometimes, in the parts of my guts that are still a schoolboy, and are mean and cruel to match, that the alcohol makes you softer than the daylight ever could. i do not tell you.
i press my lips to your forehead. i wrap my arms around you. the year between us rings heavy, and when I get up in the morning, you do not follow.
I tried, Su. I did. I applied for university, I saw that girl with that smile. with those eyes. I let you take sections from the paper before I ever touched it, I held the little ones in my arms, and I made coffee in the morning. I sat all my exams.
I smiled when the little ones came back smelling of home.
Aslan's wounds, did I try. but-
I have ever been a thing made for stories. brave the way knights are, bloody knuckles and buckling pride. a horse between my calves, a sword in my hands.
I think, sometimes, that I was born for my sword, for the hollow ringing of my heart when I first held it. a part of me, even then, ten-and-three and soaked to the bone.
such bravery is not made for real world boys and real world taunts. there is a map, I think, from the summits of my knuckles to the jaws of every boy who ever looked at me and bared his teeth.
I am sovereign. I am the skies for your sun to burn in.
I am made wrong, for this england, and I cannot take this life you want. I belong, I think, into myths and legend, the star-studded shards of our home.
so I went on the train, Susan. so I died, and I named what you have chosen. so you grip your husband's hand, realest of us all, and you cry. you do not follow.
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