Before You Break

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“Daddy, please. I . . . I need to see Christopher,” I sobbed. “I need to be with him.”

My father gripped the door handle and stood firm and resolute, despite the stream of tears tumbling down his cheeks.

“Nie, C . . . Corka.” His voice cracked, so his Polish sounded jumbled. Strained. Mangled. Just like my heart. “You don’t want to see him like this. Please . . . go back downstairs.”

I fell to my knees on the carpet and buried my face in my hands. I could hear my mother’s guttural wailing from the kitchen below, and it was a noise I wouldn’t soon forget.

The sound of the siren sliced though my family’s sorrow and then imprinted its glaring lights on our once peaceful home.

And that’s when the realization struck me so hard that the air was forced straight from my lungs. I gripped my stomach and wept so mercilessly that no sound fell from my lips.

My brother was truly gone.

I lined everything up perfectly on the small brown desktop. My coffee cup, my notes, and the psychology textbook I’d been studying from this semester. My fingers straightened the black picture frame behind my laptop before they traced over Christopher’s soulful eyes, his quiet smile.

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