Body: Brekel

I covered her hand with mine. Her fingers felt like dry twigs, fragile and ancient. “You gave me ten more years,” I said. “Ten years of sunrises. Ten years of rain on the roof. Ten years of hearing my sister laugh.”

“Does it hurt?”

I learned to negotiate. I learned to walk in a way that disguised the hitch in my hip. I learned to smile evenly, rehearsing the motion in the mirror until both halves of my face arrived at the same time. I learned to laugh on cue, even when the laughter felt like something I was watching from across a room. brekel body

Some truths are not for patchers. Some truths are only for brekels, carried silently in our stitched chests, until the day the last patch fails and we finally— finally —become whole again. I covered her hand with mine