Reva Dagger

I can picture her blue eyes now, even though they’re tightly closed. Her hair is still as it splays on the ground around her face, void of the flow and movement of life and motion. Her face is pale. It makes the freckles on her nose even bolder.

There’s no anger in her expression now. There was always anger. A fire in her eyes that constantly sought something or someone to burn. Sometimes they softened when she laughed. She had an amazing laugh, a deep giggle that came easy, usually at truly comical things, sometimes at odd things, like when someone got hurt.

We used to talk about how we were two halves of the same person. We weren’t identical in soul or face, but we were rather … fused. I used to call her my Right Arm. She called me her Left Foot.

I didn’t kill her. No one killed her. She killed herself.

As I sit at her grave and explore the grief swirling within me, I notice an absence of anger, blame, guilt, injustice, and confusion.

Her death was no mystery. She was killed by the hurricane of her own making.

The destruction was catastrophic.

I pull a blade from the sheath at my belt and hold my right arm over the hole in the ground where my sister lay. With my left hand, I begin sawing at the flesh of my arm, just above the elbow.