Ode to For-never

Ode to For-never

We don't talk much anymore and I can't say I'm torn up inside.

I miss you. God, I miss you more than anything on this earth: I miss the long days we used to spend up in our room, looking out the window and dreaming and scheming, calculating and theorizing how long it would be until we were famous and we could walk down the street and someone would shout, or scream, or want to take a Muggle Instamatic with us. I miss all those nights we used to sneak out of the house when Mum thought she was keeping her eye on us, and we'd go to the top of that giant hill behind the house and sit on it, a hand reaching as far to the sky as humanly possible.

And I'd point out the constellations, because I was always better in Astronomy. You admitted that in the summer stretch before fifth year, when everything was changing and you could finally agree that I was better at something. Astronomy was mine. It was all something I knew and you didn't, but I shared it with you and we laughed, and I remember sneaking little glances at you as you just stared up at Orion's Belt and asked why there wasn't an Orion's Sock.

Life was good back then, back when everything that seems so far out of reach now was tangible and just there; and summer was a solace. Life was better than it ever has been, or ever will be, even if you think right now you're hitting your peak. But I know better: I'm better at remembering, without your endless doubt. You loved those hot, sticky nights, and I loved them too. Above everything else that we don't mirror anymore, we agreed that the best thing in the world was sitting outside and being bitten by mosquitoes and sharing a quilt, that comforter, one comfort. You and I.

It's different now. Did I tell you I put that old quilt in the trunk? I didn't want to, but I did.

I think you might want it back. You just sent that letter, telling me all about the boys and how you're so happy they're twins, and Angelina laughs all the time and you love being a father more than anything in the world. Bullshit. That's what you said about summer.

But right now you're thrilled and taken with the prospect of creating life in your own hands, cradling the little bundles of joy that will someday grow up to be our age, when they're fathers, and you're six feet under or if not then you're sitting in a rocking chair somewhere wishing you were. That's the way it always happens, sometimes sooner than it usually happens for the rest of us. When you're alone you sometimes just wish you'd die: I know. You turn mechanical as someone else is alive.

Programmed movements: isn't that why you sent the letter? You think you care that I think/care, but in the end it's all a lie and this letter is forgotten because you sent it on a whim. Whim, fine. But you told me about the boys.

Red-headed: pale skin. Never mind that it's practically impossible, that Angelina has the dominant gene, it's some sort of real-life anomaly, I swear. They don't have glasses like Percy, and they're not as gangly as Ron was, not yet anyway, and thank God. They're short, and stocky, and my God George, they look so much like you and I that it's incredible, and Angelina says she doesn't know what happened because she fully was expecting a girl. Not two girls, even though that's what the doctor told her: twin boys. Fully identical, and they have the same freckles and brown eyes, the same exact eyes, and they're abso-freaking-lutely like us.

Not like us, I think, as I reread that. Like we were. And I still can't believe you wrote that.

We've changed. I'm still Fred-or-George and you're most definitely Fred, because you married Angelina and you have those twin boys and you hope and pray every night that they'll grow up to be like us. I hope and pray, probably at the same time every fucking night and every fucking morning and at every spare second of every spare day that they're not like us, that they're smarter than I ever was.

You want the quilt, and you're going to let them sneak past you on their way out the door every summer night, and you're going to hope one of them knows Astronomy, and if they don't, you'll teach them. But only one of them. Because they're not supposed to be exactly alike; because then they wouldn't be like we were.

Well, no shit. You weren't as screwed up as I was. You'll never be that way, or see things through my eyes, because even though they look the same as yours, they aren't. I saw things differently and it didn't have anything to do with my vision: I was just messed-up and small and wanting what I couldn't have and thinking that maybe it was possible. I wish someone had told me it was never possible.

Nothing's possible anymore. I only wanted you to love me, to see the hidden meaning in those midnight trips to the back yard where everything was scared but not quite holy, because God looks down on sinners like me and you. Like me and the you I thought you were.

You gave her my lifetime. Well, fine. Take it again and again, because I don't want it anymore. Sit outside and bite the mosquitoes back for all those times we never did a thing to them. I'd help you, but you don't want me there. You just want me at a distance: there when you need someone to talk to; there when you feel like taking a spare second and thinking about your family and remembering that even in those scary winters when the outside world was so far away and our brothers hated us because we were the youngest and our parents said I was crazy because we were our only friends... they tried to slowly ease you from me and- who the hell am I kidding? You listened to that, I know you did, and you don't want me.

And I miss you more and more everyday, but I know it's better that we're apart and it's better that it's snowing, because you were right the first time and I'm not better, I'm just screwed up inside because I love my brother, love him more than I should.

And you don't come to me and I won't go to you; and you kiss her in the dark under something that could have been our quilt and raise another screwed up mind. I sit and watch.

And life goes on.

And I can't say I'm torn up inside.