As I viewed those eyes, open forever from the shock of the bullet, noticing the traces of blood filling those paralyzed nostrils, I recalled my words that now have turned into prophecy.
During our last visit, hugging your emaciated body, I professed my love after you displayed your new paintings. We’d been apart for five years.
Did I tell you how much I liked them? Especially the broad colors, the wide strokes. Like a desert with all its mysteries transferred onto canvas with globs of oil paint that you said took days to dry.
Especially when you said “This one isn’t me. It’s something I’ve never done before.”
Did you know then?
Had you planned this trip?
Had you decided we all deserved this or was it because your life had become too painful?
Or maybe you decided to use this as a knife because it was I who said, “Please clean this place up. I love you and I don’t want the image of my brother being found dead in here, bitten by some rabid rat, or some rattle snake.”
But here is where you choose to end it. Not some attack of nature, but a finger on the trigger. End it as you lived. On the edge, your way.
And as our sister proclaimed you Jesus, who died for our sins and teeters on insanity because her best friend never said goodbye.
I can’t help but wonder if I wasn’t the target. Strange, isn’t it? It’s as self-centered as your action.
Maybe we were brothers with more in common than we thought?
*****
C.W. Bigelow lives around Charlotte, North Carolina. His recent fiction and poetry have appeared in Blood & Bourbon, Backchannels, The Saturday Evening Post, Flash Fiction Magazine, Remington Review, The Write Launch, Hole in the Head Review, Blue Mountain Review, Midway Journal, Frost Meadow Review and The Heartland Review.
