Dear Sam,
I know you won’t open this. I know you think I’m not your little sister anymore. You miss the other brother already, you miss me as much as you missed having the measles when we were three. You’ll miss him even though I told you what he had done. I understand. You were right. I didn’t make something of myself like I should have, there are no victories, as you said; just snippets of who we ought to be.

“You could could still be an adventurer but one that types things, organises things for people.” 
“You mean a secretary?”
“Yeah exactly like that.”
“Pfft.”
“I don’t know what your laughing at, you need to make a living somehow.”
“I can do that, I can live can’t I?”

You can’t see how small I am now. If walk out of this building, I’ll be seen. Its not like being left with mama Indian drip from the ceiling that transformed into the Ganges. Its not as fun. If I’m sat on a  carpet that isn’t this corpse brown, singed wreck they’ll do their justice. Now its all over I still can’t tell the truth. The other brother was older than me by five years but younger in a sense. He went to a different school and had a different way of remembering things. How convenient. When the silvery tendrils of saliva came from his gaping mouth I knew I had to get mama. You played with him a lot, but I was a girl and so I could never be a cowboy. So I decided to became an adventurer because I wouldn’t think of anything else. And I hid from other brother, he was the only thing I was afraid of. I didn’t even mind the thought of a boogey man under my bed. Daddy sent  me doll’s with cracked faces and cars with burnt wheels. You and other brother had the same Papa, but mine was different. He had a motorbike and a moustache that got tangled with  pieces of food when he ate. Papa loved the movies.

“Whats that?” I asked him. I was seven, He left a few years after that. He didn’t tell me then, or ever. “You’re mother really does keep you lot living in the past,” said Papa. She said that a little devil was inside the box and made it rattle, made the pop and  flash of white when it was angry. It steals away a moment from your heart- like a skin graft, a permanent piece of you on papery flesh.
Though Shalt not steal…

“Look kiddo I know this is some George Lucas stuff to you,” said Papa.
“But I want to have something of you.”

The fabric of my dress seemed slippery. My feet made terrible squelching sounds with when I made my way in front of the thing. Lights were adjusted like dim dawns. “Alright, say cheese doll.” The thing captured me: dry mouth, frown, pink frock. This moment was a thin piece of paper, my fear is a thin object. Something that could be ripped up and cut.

“Papa?”
“What do you want now little lady?”
“Take another one.” I thought of my mother.

The circular light space churns iridescent shards of white into shadows with passing cars. My stomach churns with it. The same feeling I got when Papa’s German shepherd brought ripped up rats, when they came with blood gushing from their yellow teeth. Like when Mama burnt the cooking because she was worrying about him. The trigger this morning was just a hinge against my watery thumb. Two wooden monsters are guarding me from the pulpit. Papa’s German shepherd did that. He did that until he nearly ripped all of the skin off the post man’s hand. Then he fell asleep, and our other brother cried for days, wouldn’t speak. Not that he did much anyways. If our mama were alive she would be silent for the rest of her life. Sweat trickles down my neck like syrupy ash, the monsters are breathing their invisible fire. Is it you? Because I know you loved our other brother.
But I had no choice. I can’t leave. I’d be shoved, asked my name, maybe my age. They’ll find I’m a year off the child mark and I’ll have to keep my right to be silent. Sammy, his fingers were yellowing anyway; his eyes were flat, circular disks. A flat circular disk lies between me and him. The only thing I have is the pride in my bravery to do it. Mama told me pride was a sin, and that sinners get washed away into pots of boiling stuff. Forever.

“I don’t want to go to church if that happens,”
“That only happens to sinful little girls,”
“But Mama!”
“No daughter of mine will be sinful.”
“But you said my dolls!”
“Shhhh!”

She slapped my hands until they were raw when she found me gloating, age of six. I was a self proclaimed explorer. I managed to carry my dolls like wounded soldiers to the great Pyramids, or the corner of my bedroom. The window was left untouched, closed forever. Our other brother hated sunlight. And mama loved him more than me. A flat disk lies. I’ve spent my life in corners. This  is my judgement. It’s etched a cinderblock truth onto the thick dust in its crevices: you can be free now, you criminal. Other Brother’s words were  heated lumps of coal singing the air around the organ below.

“No-oo….”
“I’m sorry.”
“No you’re not you’re not sorry!”
“Yes I am, I’m sorry that I didn’t do this sooner.”
“Sto-op!”
“Its like going to sleep, just go to sleep-“
“NO-OO!”
‘Shhhhhh!!!”

You will never forgive me. You won’t ever want to touch my blonde hair between your fingers or touch me  again. You will grieve, be singed with a bright and burning holy shock. You must know by now. This morning, we lost. Was it the right thing to do? Was it right that you had another papa, was it right that my  papa left. I don’t blame her for not noticing. I blame her for not believing me.

“Mama…”
“Papa…”
“Papa!!”
Come back.
“Mama! Mama!!”
Forgive me.

White prayer books sicken me.  Charity boxes stacked to the roof for a good cause- divides are divine. Divine walls seem to forgive me. Their outside; I’m not a minor anymore, but a major part of the world now and nothing can stay inside the way things used to stay in our apartment. Glass bottles smashed into accidental chandeliers, the smell of rubbing alcohol… You told me once that God was a watchmaker. If so, why didn’t he make people tick on without feeling the need to do the unspeakable to a child.

I shot him.  My milky palms wrapped around the metal beast and ate up his heart with lead. When we were six years old, I had anaemia, but you told me I was just milky. So mama gave me milk.  This morning I was eighteen, I was hurting, but you told me I was overreacting. So I gave him a bullet. I am the innocent. I always was, the golden child in a family of four and a part time string of father figures. I am the triumphant criminal. Other brother is not my brother. You were half my brother. I knew that because we had the same freckles on our left chin, and I scratched the same scar you had on your knee on mine with a pencil. Mama nearly had me put up for adoption for that, my Sunday clothes didn’t cover my knees. She told me that God could see everything. Even in the confines of corners, bedrooms. Surely God would have told her. Surely God knew. My crime will be reported. His will not. There is a gaping hole in everything. There is guilt, there is no life between my  fingers: a homunculus sits between the yellow and whites of these walls.