02-02-2020, 12:53 AM
I was a dreamer before you went and let me down —
She cannot think of anyone on all the earth that she loved the way that she loved her brother. They belonged to each other in a way that they could never belong to anyone else – they knew each other’s heartbeats in a way that no one else ever would. She has loved, romantically, but it was not the same; maybe because the love she had found had been all wrong. It had hurt more than it healed, had left her feeling hollowed out and inferior. Love wasn’t supposed to be like that, she doesn’t think – romantic or otherwise.
Because the familial love she had for her brother was unconditional, and even when he was gone she never doubted it.
She held nothing against him for being gone, something she is sure she has learned or inherited from her mother. Because she had grown up watching her mother refuse to crumble in her father’s sporadic absences; had seen the way she never harbored an ounce of malice towards him for being gone. And Kennice knows that just as she is a little piece of their mother, Kensley is a little piece of their father, and they could not be anything other than what they were born to be. He was born to leave and she was born to forgive, and she forgives him as easily as her heart beats in her chest.
He is redirecting the conversation, and though her eyes linger on his face a little longer, and she cannot hide the skepticism on her own face, she does not argue. “Hiding,” she says, and it is more or less true. “There hasn’t really been anything left for me here. I didn’t see the point in watching the world go on without me.” She pauses, and maybe if it was anyone else she could have ignored the extreme changes in someone she had once known. But it’s not just anyone, it’s him, and even if his heart his dead hers is still alive, and the pieces of them were too much the same for her to ignore it. “Please don’t hide things from me, Kensley,” she says softly, reaching to skim her lips across the plain of his cheek. “You can tell me anything, you know that.”
Because the familial love she had for her brother was unconditional, and even when he was gone she never doubted it.
She held nothing against him for being gone, something she is sure she has learned or inherited from her mother. Because she had grown up watching her mother refuse to crumble in her father’s sporadic absences; had seen the way she never harbored an ounce of malice towards him for being gone. And Kennice knows that just as she is a little piece of their mother, Kensley is a little piece of their father, and they could not be anything other than what they were born to be. He was born to leave and she was born to forgive, and she forgives him as easily as her heart beats in her chest.
He is redirecting the conversation, and though her eyes linger on his face a little longer, and she cannot hide the skepticism on her own face, she does not argue. “Hiding,” she says, and it is more or less true. “There hasn’t really been anything left for me here. I didn’t see the point in watching the world go on without me.” She pauses, and maybe if it was anyone else she could have ignored the extreme changes in someone she had once known. But it’s not just anyone, it’s him, and even if his heart his dead hers is still alive, and the pieces of them were too much the same for her to ignore it. “Please don’t hide things from me, Kensley,” she says softly, reaching to skim her lips across the plain of his cheek. “You can tell me anything, you know that.”
KENNICE
