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Back then, he loved the rain – loved the sounds of thunder, strong and resilient, that would boom through his home.
Always a sign of something bigger than him out there.
And, back then, that wasn’t something scary. He loved lightning too, despite how dangerous it was. Maybe it was the silent way it struck that had him mesmerized, or maybe it was how beautiful lightning was.
Lightning was a light in the dark, a solid shape in the magnificent emptiness that was the night sky, molded by electricity and the clouds that formed over everything, wispy and barely-there but always present.
Or maybe it just reminded him of his sister, the one person he knew, even at the young age of 7, that he would die for.
A spark, something that can live, like the flames from his māma’s candles, the sweet smell of lavender floating through the air and the fire illuminating the excitement in his sister’s eyes.
Or, a spark, something that can die.
His sister had been a spark.
And he learns – it doesn’t matter who you would die for, not really. Not when they’re already gone, smiles and love turning into embers and ashes and then scattered into the air by too grown hands. Hands that used to run through his hair now leaving handprints on his too tiny shoulders, like a brand imprint of their pain, of their grief, of their agony.
He learns it doesn’t matter, because she, his little sister who loved to watch cartoons, who made him be the princess she had to save when she wanted to be the knight, was gone. She, who he called “xiǎo huǒhuā” because she was a little spark, her flame, her life, born for greatness was snatched away in an instant and-
None of it matters.
His māma makes sure of it.
Shreds it, throws it away, burns it.
All of it, all of it.
All of her.
Gone.
In an instant.
And here’s another thing that he learns – to his parents, he’s gone too.
~~
There used to be comfort in loud noises. Back then, before the sight of walnuts made his vision blurry and his stomach sick with guilt, loud noises meant the tinkling of laughter echoing throughout his home, the television blaring, and the sound of rain cleansing the world from any negativity.
That was then.
This is now.
Loud noises are shattered bowls and the sound of the broom wiping across the floor, his hands pressed tight to the shaft to stop the minute shaking. Loud noises are his māma’s cries, loud and guttural, filled with a pain that makes him shiver underneath his covers, in the night, and loud and startling in the day. Loud noises mean trouble. It means fights and spoiled dinners and accusations and-
“It was your fault! Yours! You killed my baby!”
So, there’s another thing that he learns – silence is survival, and loud is a knife, dripping with blood that smells like walnuts and motherly sneers, held to his throat by a hand that looks like his māma’s.
(He also learns, but does not dwell on, that he is not his māma’s baby anymore. But, at that point, the loss of that is outweighed by the loss of everything else, a small wound to an area that’s already bleeding out.)
And here’s the thing. Before, when he still had bows in his hair placed by hands smaller than his, he loved the rain, loved the thunder, loved the lightning, loved his spark-
He thinks, late at night when the only sound that’s lingering in the dead silence of the house is his rapid heartbeat, the same stuttering and struggling beat it’s been since his sister’s heartbeat stopped.
He thinks, if.
If it was silent, if he had heard the sounds of her choking and desperate for air before it was too late, if it hadn’t been raining so hard that nobody heard his cries for help and the banging on the door and the window glass shattering from his desperate attempts to save his sister.
If the door hadn’t been locked from the outside, if he had been paying attention rather than listening to the melody he used to think the rain orchestrated just for him.
If he hadn’t been so distracted by noise.
If.
And then he thinks, maybe.
Maybe his sister would be alive.
Maybe he wouldn’t know how cold a body can feel, wouldn’t know how deep and earth shattering a mother’s grief is, wouldn’t know what it means to scream so loud it feels like you’re not screaming at all, wouldn’t know what it looks like to see the light – the spark disappear from someone’s eyes, wouldn’t know what it means to have killed someone.
Maybe’s that are so dependent on If’s.
If it was silent. Maybe he would still have a sister.
But it wasn’t. But he doesn’t.
It was loud. And she is gone.
So, here’s another thing he learned – it is nothing to stop talking when there is another who no longer breathes, no longer talks and is no longer loud and full of love, bursting from the edges of stardust that is her just because he couldn’t be silent.