I Told the Stars about You

Prologue

I used to stare at the ceiling of this blue painted bedroom with the exhaustion that weighed upon me after a long, exhausting, and gratifying day.

I used to look at the ceiling and see white, just as a form of light, and fall asleep to the thought of stars floating in the sky above this house. I used to see things with such ordinary ignorance.

Now I don't.

I see the fissures. The cracks in the paint forming interconnected lines spreading along the space of the ceiling. It feels as if, in this time of exhaustion, the house is mourning what was once here. Heat, warmth, life.

She's dead.

I dig my fingers into the rotten wooden floorboards.

The nights used to fly, like birds with long, graceful wings, taking me to places created in the figments of my imagination. Now they are long, excruciatingly painful, with the memories of the past occupying every crevice in my consciousness. Sleep used to be a time for rest, but currently, even my dreams are plagued with moments of her.

I force myself to lie down on the floor of this bedroom. I force myself to lie in the cold until I feel it biting into my very bones, sharp needles piercing my flesh. I force myself to remember every moment- to paralyse myself in fear in the dark while the rest of the world rests. I do it to avoid forgetting my actions. I need to torture myself with these moments, or she will be forever gone.

I will admit to being obsessed with knowing what she was thinking in those final moments.

I will admit to that.

I will admit to being consumed, daunted, and plagued with knowing what she might have said right before jumping off that cliff.

I will admit to that.

Did she just stare out into the night sky, unblinking, and step off? Or did she look around her, try to grasp her last view of life-

No, she wouldn't have, I think, tensing until the bones of my back dig into the hardwood floor. I make myself imagine another scenario. Close my eyes and make the image of her bite into my memory.

She must have stared down, observed the drop, and followed the movement of the waves that would later push her against sharp rocks and break open her skull. She would have been brave in a strange way. In her final moments, she would have been brave.

But, I pause my thoughts, overwhelmed by the silence, as if even the dust coating my skin is listening. What if she was crying?

No.

What if she was... overcome by this need, this emotion she didn't understand?

Stop it.

What if she didn't truly want to jump?

Scream.

For the past three days, I've been imagining that she would have jumped off that cliff in silence. But the pathologists came back today, to tell us her vocal cords were worn from, what most likely was, screaming.

They don't know what she screamed, of course.

"We can only confirm it was suicide. The screaming doesn't really matter." That's what they said. I remember it very well. I remember it very well because of how ridiculous it sounded at the time. I nodded. Good boys nod, Mum taught me. Good boys take the information they are given and smile and say thank you and thank you for your time and thank you for telling me my sister died of suicide.

It doesn't really matter?

It doesn't really matter?

The thoughts follow me every day, the memories consume my every moment, my breathing is heavy and hot and exhausted and all they can say is that it doesn't really matter?

Of course, it wouldn't matter to them. They won't lose nights of sleep over this. They won't drive themselves to the brink of insanity to try and find out the impossible. All they have to do it write a stupid fucking report with 'suicide' on it.

Suicide.

One word. 7 letters. It seems like such a small word for everything it entails. I think it's stupid. The word, the action, the concept, the pain- everything. I need to make myself believe it's stupid or it will hurt too damn much.

I follow one of the cracks in the ceiling, from the right-hand corner all the way to the centre.

They don't care, I remind myself, pulling my fingertips out of the rotten wood. Feeling my nails bleed. They don't care at all.

I will admit to a lot of things. I will admit to not being there for her, I will admit to breaking up her relationships, her friendships. I will admit to having a fault in all of this. You could say that, somehow, in a weird, confusing way, I've come to terms with not seeing her anymore.

But I will never admit to her being gone. I will never admit to that destroyed, bloody, broken body being hers.

And I know that's my demise, in the end.