Sugarcane and Indigo

Don't Forget Me

Indigo Byrd was a run on sentence full of grammar mistakes and tangents and contradictions that you could spend forever rereading and never quite figure out the meaning to. He had eyes that reminded you of muddy puddles and early springtime. The type of eyes that made you think of coming home from school in the rain when the sky was the color of the dirty water artists would clean their paintbrushes in and the Earth was a soggy, mushy sponge.  He had eyes that reminded you of lounging around a warm, cozy home while something was cooking in the oven and someone was watching TV quietly in the background. He had eyes that reminded you of safety and feeling loved. Of knowing that someone was taking care of you. Of the simplicity of childhood.

It was easy, loving those eyes.

    Violet Byrd had loved those eyes. It was the last thing on her mind as she lay dying in a muddy field and the first thing she thought of when she woke up greeted by the afterlife. There was no heaven waiting for her. No angels. No demons. No pearly white gates or grim reaper or anything signifying that she was gone other than her bloodied body laying in a hole at her feet and the retreating back of a person she had been raised to trust.

    That was the thing about dying, Violet had decided, it revealed a lot more about being alive.

    With nowhere to go Violet had decided to go where she always did when she was frightened. She went home to her brother.

    She went to open the door but her hand passed right through. So she drifted through the solid blue painted wood and up the stairs to her big brother's room. The same room where she hid from storms and monsters under the bed and all types of danger that until now had seemed to be the be-all end-all of her concerns.

    She hadn't known that monsters could wear human faces, too.

    She had climbed into bed with her big brother and he had opened a sleepy eye to glance at her.

    "Where were you, Vi? Mama and Papa were worried," he had whispered.

    She didn't know what to say, just that she missed him and death wasn't at all like her mother had said it'd be and life wasn't either, it appeared. So she pressed into his side as tight as she could and soaked up his warmth. She couldn't seem to get warm now. Indigo just held her tight.

"Don't forget me," she begged quietly all through the night, "Please, Indy, don't let me go."   

The next morning when their parents were still searching for her, still talking to the police, Indigo had pointed to where violet hovered slightly above the ground and had told them she was over there.

    His father had almost slapped him for making up an imaginary friend at a time like this.

    Indigo hadn't realized she was dead for a long time. He thought maybe his sister had superpowers like they showed in the comic books. Maybe she could turn herself invisible and hadn't figured out how to be seen yet, he thought. Maybe he had superpowers too. Maybe his superpower was seeing her.

    It didn't hit him that Violet was gone till the day their parents dressed him in an ebony black suit and drove down to the cemetery and forced him to watch as they buried an empty coffin beneath a tombstone that read "Violet Byrd, gone but never forgotten".

    They left town soon after. His mama couldn't stay in the same town that had stolen her only daughter.

    Indigo had fought tooth and nail for the longest time. He was scared that if they left they'd leave Violet behind. And he'd promised that he wouldn't leave her. His father told him that Violet was already gone. You couldn't lose what you've already lost.