In my dreams, I see my brother.
He is fluid, moving from place to place, his face flickering from young to old, his voice both distant and near. I am searching for him, trying desperately to reach him in time, before he fades away again.
He asks me things, advice, questions about our past and his future. I want to know when I can see him again. He says he does not know. I ask why he isn't closer to me, and he says he didn't choose this path.
I can hear him laughing, see his face as it was when we were children. His eyes were always so serious for a boy so young, dark, seeing all. He was vulnerable. When he smiled, it made you smile, it made you forget those serious eyes. He was quiet, but his laugh was golden. I want to go back and apologize for being the bullying older sister that I was. I want to do it over again, try to right our wrongs. I want to find the places where he was hurt and fix them, so that his eyes will be less serious and his laugh more frequent.
I have known him for his whole life, but he is still a mystery to me. His ways are different, his thoughts of a different hue than mine. He is funny and sly in ways I am not, and his ambitions, his habits, are foreign to me. It has always baffled me, this difference in essence. Since I was old enough to look at him and see a person, not a pesky little brother, I have wanted to reach him. I want to see things as he does, for we are so different.
I wonder if he still admires me. Growing up, my parents told me time and again that he only wanted to be like me, and I didn't understand. When we were older, I often seemed to have more influence over him than they did, but I still couldn't reach him, for all that I tried. I tried to find his hurt and heal it, and found that I could not. I'm still trying.
In my dreams, I see my brother, but even though I am his older sister, he always seems older than me. And despite the fact that I am searching for him because he needs me, I know that in truth, I am searching because I need him.
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