The Day I Saw You Die

I sat on my bed,
ready to fall asleep.

It's strange how the dark
always showed me more than the light
as if daylight refused to reveal
what the night whispered freely.

In the darkness,
a tug pulled deep in my heart,
sharp and sudden,
like something had entered the room
before I understood its name.

Then I saw it
your bus dropping you off at home.
But something was wrong.
I couldn't name it,
couldn't hold it,
but it hollowed the air around me.

The vision shifted
I was at school,
lying on the grass,
my friends nearby
Throwing a football back and forth.
My friend walked toward me,
telling me a story
about a boy she liked.

And then
I was pushed through a door
into your room,
where you lay
for the last time.

A month,
that's all I heard.
A month,
and you would be gone.

My sunshine.
My friend.
My protector.
My other half.

Gone.

I collapsed back into my bed,
breath shaking,
wondering what I had just witnessed
for I had never seen someone die
while they were still alive.

So I told myself it wasn't true.

But the dark does not lie,
and neither did the vision.

Still, I whispered the adult's comfort
to myself like a lullaby
It isn't real.
It isn't real.
It isn't real.

But the truth pulsed beneath my ribs
like a second heartbeat,
echoing a fate I was too young to hold.

Because somewhere beyond the veil,
something had already chosen you
already reached for you
already written your name
on a page I could not tear out.

And deep down,
in the part of me that always knew too much,
I felt it:

my sister,
my sun,
my safest place

already dying
inside the body
that still came home to me
that night.