All My White Lies | bnha

six | broken wings

IT TOOK TWO DAYS FOR KIOSHI TO WAKE UP. I wasn't there when he did, but when I got to the hospital from school, I saw him grinning. Wiggling his tiny toes as if the little piggies were going everywhere except where the rhyme said they would go. His hands were wrapped around the wires and I knew he had tugged at them a few times just for the normalcy of scolding.

Kioshi didn't like hospitals; no kid did. But he didn't like what he was reminded of. He didn't like the dingy flowers or the crinkly 'Get Well Soon!' balloons. He liked being wrapped up under the blanket and rolling Hot Wheels cars across his knees, he liked staring out the window and cloud watching.

He liked shredding his reality into pieces and even if that was the only thing he knew as a kid, he was aware enough to understand what was going on in his body. We always explained it like it was a little army. And his army was losing right now, but this was just one battle in the middle of a war.

This battle was just a lot harder than the others.

"I got Mama to bring a sketchpad, you see?!" Kioshi practically shoved it in my face. I was sure that if it hadn't been for the wires holding him back, he would've slammed it against my nose. I beamed back at him, watching him reach for another crayon that rolled across his bedside. "Yeah, I see. What have you drawn?"

Kioshi didn't say anything, grinning impishly back at me. I reached for it, hands curling over the notebook. It was a small t-rex, its tiny arms reached out in a Godzilla-like pose. "You want me to draw this too? Make it larger than life?" I teased, brows raised as I hung my hands over him like claws.

He shrieked, curling away from me and into the frame of his bed. "No, no! Godzilla's scary!" I smiled at him, dropping my arms and plopping back to the seat next to him. I slid the sketchbook onto the table, eyes flitting up to his smaller figure. He pouted, as if contemplating on whether or not he should forgive me.

"Do you want a bird?"

"Yes, please!"

Although I had just set it down, I took the notepad again, already beginning to scrawl a bird. It was scrawny, wings bent awkwardly with feet that looked more crooked than functional, but it was his. And he smiled brightly at it, cupping the small bird in his hands and murmuring sweet words to it.

Maybe it was the hospital that had made him more sentimental now, that twitch of his fingers deciding whether or not to pop the ink blob completely obliterated. It didn't exist anymore. It was touch-and-go. "I'll draw you something too," Kioshi blurted all of a sudden, his eyes still settled on the creature in between his fingers.

It moved, flicking its tail and pecking lightly at his hands. "Draw me what?" I questioned, pulling his arm slightly closer to the IV drip when I saw that it was inches away from being ripped out of his arm completely. "I don't know. Something," People liked to say that kids didn't think much.

Their imagination had the steering wheel of the car in their brain, swerving and stopping as it pleased. Yet, looking at my little brother, I knew that was a lie. Kids thought, and sometimes they overthought just like any human being. And my brother seemed to be one of the biggest overthinkers of all.

His veins were filled with dying soldiers and his brain roamed with unrealistic birds. Kioshi was clouded with life and filled with death; thoughts of creation and actions of destruction. "Well, when you do draw it, make sure to show me as soon as possible. Like, wham! Y'know?" I teased him, poking his cheek.

The boy tilted his head towards me, angling his scalp so that my fingers fell against his black locks. "Mhm, I will," He nodded adamantly at me. I don't know why I was saying these things now. He always showed me when he drew something, even if it was incoherent beyond belief.

I was his rock, his first fan, his number one cheerleader. Yet, it felt like I was begging a soul to stay. As if the wires linked to his arms anchored him onto the hospital bed that threatened to darken the reality I lived in. That we both lived in. "Pinky promise?" I raised my free hand, the one that wasn't stroking his hair.

He raised one hand and clasped his pinky with mine, the bird sloping against his chest as he did. "Pinky promise," Kioshi's voice was barely above a whisper and I knew he was close to falling asleep. I took the bird back in my hand, its crooked little walk leaving ticklish sensations across the skin of my palm.

I watched my younger brother fall asleep, hoping that he'd wake up again to give me another drawing to trace in the morning.

Everyday was like a new risk; a newfound sense of fifty-fifty. I didn't like listening to the doctors, not when they gave bad news. Kioshi didn't fully understand them either sometimes, so I always opted to keep him company. Palms open, ink dripping, and dozens of birds dancing across the room.

There was always the legend of a thousand paper cranes granting your wish, but Kioshi liked to believe in a different one. A wish where twelve little birds danced and entertained him in his hospital room; twelve being his favorite number and birds being his long-term animal obsession.

Sometimes he'd have phases where he'd obsessively ask me to draw dogs, tigers, or the occasional shark (which looked more like a deformed dolphin), but birds always stayed. He liked the different colors; the teal of a kingfisher, the sunset hue of a robin, and the tawny of a woodpecker.

They all spoke differently to my brother; as if he had harnessed all their languages. "Papa told me you can't give me it anymore. Your bone mare-no," He struggled with the word and I laughed softly at him, correcting him as I raised one of the ink creatures up to his shoulder, watching it press against the skin of his face.

"Marrow,"

"That!" He spoke as if I'd discovered something so great. "Why can't you?"

I didn't know how to say anything for a second. How do you explain to a child that you're the reason the process is taking so long? That your body can't create anymore of the one thing his is meant to destroy? "Well, buddy—" I started only to be cut off. Kioshi pouted, fingers tenderly brushing against another ink-bird.

"—don't say that. You always say that when you have bad news,"

"I do?"

"Yeah, you said that when you forgot to get me chocolate."

"When was that?"

"The last time I was here,"

"When else did I say it?"

"When that baby bunny died, that one time you ate my chips, and also when you knocked down my Lego house."

I chuckled softly. "You remember all of this?"

"I can't forget it," Kioshi looked over at me. I wanted to cry right then and there. Fall apart, let reality finally shred me into pieces in front of my little brother. Dying people always have this look in their eyes, this uncertain fondness for the people with them. I don't think he understood that life was temporary; that for him it was even more so.

But he knew the meaning of people, the love he was meant to give and take. He understood me. "Can't or don't want to?"

I wondered if he knew the difference, but the look in his eyes told me he didn't. Kioshi simply shook his head, unable to come up with an answer as he turned back to one of the birds. And I don't know what was harder, seeing him turn away or knowing he was unable to come up with an answer.

He was too young to.