A Long Time Coming

- Miss Andrea, I’m very angry.
- Why Amelia?
- Because my aunty is evil she makes me write my spelling words six times each, every night
- I’m very sorry milly, but I tell you what, when your older six times each wont seem so bad.
I love this child and I hope her problems are always this simple.

I lost my brother today. Not my real brother, mi hermano, mi compadre. He was shot yesterday, in the lung and gave way to it today. Doctors said if he made it through last night he would make it, but when have doctors ever been right? And the weird part is, I’m not very effected by it. Death has been waiting for him, I’ve seen him in the rafters since he got into selling smack, I knew he’d go the same way as his brother. But it still hurts. He was my first love, the first boy I ever played spin the bottle with, the first boy I decided I was gonna marry, my best friend and as these past few years have passed, my biggest heartache. Chris, I know too many Christophers and I must say I think I would trade any of them for him in a heartbeat. I miss him but I’ve been missing him for quite some time now, I don’t feel much different, maybe its cause I’m in shock. Maybe its cause I’m more concerned with the living or because I'm more concerned with myself. They don’t even know who shot him, if it was one of his runners or some random tecato. I keep thinking of the stupidest shit, like watching him eat his own boogers for money, or his dorky old glasses, or how short he was or riding down the road together on mudslides. Kermit The Frog and Miss Piggy and him and Leo in Drag, truth or dare, showers in the front yard at three AM, jockey shorts, four door roller skate, three point IQ hike, his eighth grade prom, oops on an ollie. Stupid happy shit that no one else understands that makes me want to cry. And then I think of him from going from the smartest kid in school to nickel and dimeing it to high school drop out with all that fuckin potential to a hustler to smack. And I get angry. I get angry because he was so young, and so smart and so charismatic. He could have been anything. But he chose to throw his life away for money. All for money its not even like he was into the fucking drugs, then I could say that he was addicted that it was a disease, and the drugs killed him. Instead I have to go around knowing that it was some random bastard. That his murder will go unsolved because the police just don’t give a shit cause his death means less drugs on the street. And I’m also angry with my self because I agree, and because the last time I talked to him it ended in me screaming at him I love you but your gonna get yourself killed, get your ass outta my house. And now he’s gone and done it. They always say that you should never make the last words you say to a person ones you will regret, because you never know if you are going to see them again. I am such an angry person I can’t do that and its tearing me up.