“Grieving is something you’re still doing,
and something you don’t need a crow for.”
‘Grief Is the Thing with Feathers’ Max Porter

She disappeared without even a trace left. Her books on the shelves, her diary on the desk, her undone bed – it all stayed the same. That’s how I remember it anyway. The next thing that I recall – she is again. The lights are flashing, techno music is banging on my eardrums and there’s a barricade of topless bodies between us but in the neon lights I see her. Her face looks like mine – it’s been almost sixteen years and her face looks like mine. 

The night she disappeared wasn’t a nightmare one would expect it to be. Our parents were annoyed that she was late but too busy to bother. Then hours passed and she didn’t show up – and then a day – actual terror followed after that. The police, the investigators, relatives, friends, neighbors, the school. Police turned the whole house upside down; they confiscated her belongings – but her diaries I had hidden. I read those diaries years after and nothing in particular stood out to me. Don’t know what big reveal I was anticipating but those pages were no different from what I wrote when I was ten years old or so. The boys, the school, poorly described fears and naïve dreams. I’ve read it all through countless times and what hurt the most were the unused pages. And then, I started writing on them too – it was the only way to talk to her that I could come up with. 

Hi.

Hi, it’s me again.

It was delusional – I knew – I know – that. 

Hello, little [smeared with pen ink].

You just disappeared. Why? I hate you for it, you know? I really, really, despise you for it. It wasn’t like you never were – because you were and you left a you-shaped hole in our lives. There is no excuse for a thing like that. 

There was a rescue operation in the town. Volunteers searched through the woods, looking under every bush. Still, she was nowhere to be found. I remember the time, vaguely, more as an alien feeling than as an actual memory, when my sister’s portrait was hanging on every pillar and I couldn’t leave the house without seeing her face. And staying inside I kept hearing her name over and over and over again. The record got stuck. There was nowhere to run – she was there. And at the same time, she wasn’t anywhere at all. Hard to explain. It was the time I didn’t really exist. It was the closest I’ve ever been to my sister. 

When I turned twenty one it dawned on me that I’ve spent more years of my life without her in it than I spent with her. And that hurt.

I hope you never read this.

I got my eyebrow pierced on my birthday that year despite our parent’s wishes. And a reckless irresponsible teenager I was, of course I didn’t bother enough to care for it, so naturally the wound festered. It stinged but I was also too stubborn and dissociated from my very body that I didn’t remove it. The ugly thing stayed on my face for a while. 

Can’t stop thinking about how if you never went, they would never be against my piercing. They’ve changed after you’ve left. They became less fun. They became concerned. I get it, I really do – still.

A few months after the disappearance, I found myself forgetting her face, bit by bit. The fear of not remembering my sister at all was insurmountable so I put a picture of her in the diary. Soon it became the only picture I recall her by. The funny part – it was the same image I saw on every pillar. The same one is on her gravestone now. She is smiling there, a kid in love with life, however, the longer you look, the uncannier the picture gets – her smile a little too wide to be real, the cruel spark in her eyes. Like she never existed at all. The most eerie thing for me when I really think about it is that to this day, I only remember her picture but they are not real her. It’s the photo – a graveyard of artistry. She is gone. I do not know her. 

Rough edges of those days she left got smoother with the years passing. Now as I sometimes think back to them, I am not quite sure if she mattered that much to me, ever. The event of her dissolving was one of the determining parts of my life and of the life of my family. But as a person – I don’t think she really mattered to me. 

That sounded cruel. I didn’t mean it to be. What I meant was that she is a sister, a photo, a diary. Those things defined me. But did she matter to me as a person? Being completely honest, I do not think that even my – our – parents can sincerely answer that question at this point. 

[a page torn out]

I feel your ghost over me at all times and I didn’t even know you. You were not old enough to be known properly. 

My parents were in agonizing sharp pain and I was not allowed to feel it. That chronic dull pain that they bury inside themselves I am not allowed to feel either, because I didn’t quite live through those hideous days like our parents did. I can hardly recall that time, it’s just the shapes, and alien stories told to me afterwards. Then the house went silent and maybe, just maybe I was allowed to feel that it was better when there were cops and neighbors, when people were suspicious or pitying or both at the same time.

[a page torn out] 

[a page torn out]

[a page torn out]

I’m losing my mind I guess but that was you. I know it was you.

She disappeared without a trace left. I’m pretty sure that it’s what happened at least and as coward-ish as it is I don’t wish to know more. 

Darling, do it for you and for your sister. She would be very proud of you, our dad said. There is always this shadow over me. I know, our parents have always meant it as a support but it doesn’t always feel like it – more like a haunting. Our parents really wanted me to be happy – but at the same time, they wanted both of their daughters. Consequently, I had to become worth the two and it is as understandable as it is injurious. 

Why did I not try to find her myself as I became older? It probably wouldn’t lead anywhere but that would be natural for me to at least try. A little detective girl. I do not know. There are some things that you do and you don’t do that you can’t fully explain. There are logical explanations, sure, but those decisions work on some subclinical level that one cannot fully understand oneself. I never attempted to understand, stubborn in my ignorance. Our parents gave up searching for her. She was never completely dead for us – it did never feel that way. As if she would ever come back. We all understood she would probably not. Sometimes hope is a knife piercing.

Not dead and not alive – my sister got stuck in this eternal soulless purgatory. At some point in my childhood, I stopped answering yes to the question if I had siblings. 

because you ain’t here.

They never renovated my sister’s room but locked it – I remember the day. The act provided an illusion of us being ready to move on whereas in fact it was more of an act of cutting a tongue out. Or piercing it right through, nailing it to that door. There was a nightmare that I had frequently at the time – that she wakes up in that room, and it is the same as she never left, and she is the same as she was, she does not know what happened and how much time passed, she wants to leave but the door is shut. Despite fear I once stole the key and opened the door. No one was there. 

You were not there.  

The first time I brought my at-that-time boyfriend to meet my parents, I showed him around the house. What’s that room, he asked, pointing at the old wooden door. Oh. That is my sister’s room, I said. I almost forgot myself that it was there. You never told me you had a sister. He expected me to have an answer to that, but I didn’t find one. It was embarrassing. He asked about her afterwards, a few times. I told him that I didn’t want to talk about it. I dumped that urge emerged. 

I am an adult. I don’t need to talk to you anymore.

When I left for college, I didn’t bring the diaries with me, however, regretted it afterwards. It was empty without them – the jigsaw piece missing. I didn’t necessarily need to write in them or reread those pages but just the presence of them felt home, that shadow I couldn’t sleep without, that comforting stinging pain in my eyebrow. So, when I returned for holidays, I did grab those fat books from the shelves. I wrote rarely to save the pages. There are still a few left. There is still the same eerie picture of her smiley face inside. 

You are not a real human person.

[smeared with pen ink]

Maybe I shouldn’t have drunk as much as I did that night. I vaguely recall vomiting in the dirty club toilet while a lady with awful mascara smears under her eyes and a stinky cigarette between her fingers was holding my hair. I don’t know her name, wouldn’t even recognize her face. I only remember two things from that night – my adult sister’s face and the streaks on the tile under my knees. They were dark yellow and brown. My hair caught on the eyebrow earring. My sister, it’s like a piercing – you stop noticing after some time. You even forget that it is there, even though your flesh was pierced, ripped apart and healed wrong. But as I touched what used to be an open wound it still stinged and smelled wrong. 

I was drunk. It wasn’t you. It couldn’t be you.

She saw me though – you did. We shared a long-lasting glance of recognition. Something confused and maybe a little cruel sparkled in her eyes, like she was about to run to me and simultaneously from me. Like she was mirroring my actions. And then someone hit me on the back of my head – don’t stand still on the dance floor, that’s an unspoken rule – and I lost her again. Then I could see her sparkling top, but not her face. I tried to follow it frantically, panicking, but eventually got lost in the crowd and found myself only as I was leaning on the wall by the restroom’s door. The nausea got overwhelming. Pulsing lights, pulsing head. If she was real, why wouldn’t she find us? What could have possibly happened throughout those sixteen years? A full life could have happened. But she recognized me – that’s how I saw it and that is how I am going to remember it. 

After that I found her journal again – it was hidden on the shelf and covered in dust. I started writing. 

I saw you today. I didn’t follow you – and I hate myself for it. I didn’t even try to do so. You were pretty – and in that one picture of yours too. Yeah. I could follow you – but I didn’t. Maybe I’ll imagine that I did later and reshape my memory – it always works with me. If I don’t even remember your face, if even your name feels alien, if you are not real, what else is there for me to do other than imagining you or tearing you out of my life? I could have shouted your name. That way I would know for sure – but I couldn’t say your name out loud. I barely remembered your name at that time. I barely recall it now. Where were you? Do you even remember your name yourself? Do you have a life? Did it hurt more for you than it did for me? 

Were you at all?

[a page torn out]

[a page torn out]

You are a sister-thing in my mind. Not quite a full-on sister.

That is only how I remember it anyway.

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Vera Podell is a Russian-born writer and photo artist. She writes in three languages which are English, Russian and German. Vera tends to experiment a lot with her writing style, primarily focusing on the theme of memory and how it forms our identity. You can find her on Instagram as @verapodell.