𝑷𝑨𝑺𝑺𝑰𝑶𝑵

☀︎︎𝑭𝑶𝑹𝑻𝒀 𝑶𝑵𝑬☀︎︎

"𝒕 𝒓 𝒂 𝒏 𝒔 𝒑 𝒂 𝒓 𝒆 𝒏 𝒕 𝒔 𝒐 𝒖 𝒍"
SAVIOR |sav
MAY
Atlanta 📍

"He ain't  like orange, Ma. He liked red. "

"But, orange looks good. Most of the family
gon like the orange better."

"It's not for them! It's for him! It don't matter what they fucking like, mama! This is for my little brother!" Rashawn screamed.

We couldn't get through planning this funeral. Nobody could agree on simple things that barely mattered. My brother could care less about the color of the flowers. He would've wanted us, at least me and Rashawn, to work together.

"You gon stop yelling at me Shawn. I just lost my son. You need to be more considerate."She continued looking through some papers.

"We just lost our brother!" He strained his voice. "Our brother is dead and you still ain't fucking doing what you supposed to be doing!" Rashawn walked out the house.

He was right.

"Y'all always wanna fight wit me. I'm not tryna fight wit y'all about this."

I was tired of listening to it, "You still don't realize what you doing wrong. You should be doing what Mani would wanted, not what people we only see every six months want."

"Oh, be quiet. Y'all are exaggerating. I'm giving him
a nice funeral, and that's all that matters."

"Give him what he would've wanted, Ma. Not everything is about you." I adjusted myself on the couch.

She always made everything about her. I was drained from being here. My mama couldn't even plan a funeral based on Mani's likes because she barely knew him as well as we did. She didn't know that he didn't like orange because she never made the effort to.

"You not being helpful either, Junior. If you came here to talk shit to me, you can leave. I don't got a problem planning a funeral by myself."

"It would be fucked up to let you plan my little brother funeral with no other opinions. I'll go talk to the coordinator myself, just to make sure it's done right. We don't need you fucking up the last time we gon see him here."

"I don't give a fuck what you do. I'm still gonna do what I feel is best."

There was no getting through to her. She was always gonna be selfish and stubborn. We were done for today. I had to leave.

I took the easy way out and got in my car. I wasn't ready to go home. I hadn't been home a lot this week because, when I got home, I had to face reality. I had to come with the terms that my brother was dead.

And, that shit hurt. It hurt more than anything.

I was trying so hard to raise him to be better than me and Shawn. I was raising him to become a respectable man, a man that could achieve whatever he wanted to. But, now he was gone because of me.

Armani wasn't meant to be shot. The shooter was aiming for me.

I should've been the one that was killed, not my little brother who had his whole life ahead of him. He didn't deserve this, any of it.

I wasn't ready to try and forgive myself, or even try to make everyone else feel better.

My brother was gone. I couldn't change that fact.

There was so much pain that I didn't have the guts to address.

These last few days were a blur.