The Black Knightress (Back up for fulls)

{97}

March 1 2016
Astoria Queens, NY
16:48
Sarah's POV

I walk from my bedroom, wandering through the apartment as I pass by curtains, Cappie's tank, book shelves and the different rooms of the apartment. The shelves catch my interest, urging me to walk to them.

I slowly walk back and forth, finally giving in by dragging my seemingly ageless fingertips across the picture frames I once touched as an innocent child. I dust off the old books on the shelf with the same fingers, mixing my hands' biological oils with the dust onto the books to protect them from getting dirty once more.

When I get back to the photo area, I pull the picture books I've never let myself look at and take them to the couch. I sit myself down and begin piecing through them as the men from most of these pictures sit in the other room drawing whatever his imagination will permit him to and writing whatever his memories will allow.

As I pass through the photos, I see my mother peeking into some of them from the edge of the camera frame. I pass through the pages as if I'm living someone else's life instead of my own.

The farther into the pictures that I get, the more I see Katherine growing before and after her birth, then we get to my father with Kathy and I with my Ma.

Then Uncle James disappears.

Then Pa disappears.

Then I appear.

Then I disappear.

But Katherine continued growing.

I continue folding through, watching my family's life follow through without me until I find pictures from Kathy's graduation and wedding. I find photos of my niece and nephew's first days out in the world.

The pictures drop my Godfather from them, breaking a piece from me of him that I didn't even know was still there. I try grasping it, but it feels as if the piece fell into the picture like it belongs there. I peek as Tony's eyes seem as dim as they can be from the loss of his parents to the slight drop of my mother's muscle support from losing her best friend.

The slight release of my older sister's smile is as noticeable as the tinge of pink in my mother's cheeks just isn't there and the loss in suppleness of my sister's skin in the photos from after the funeral.

I almost test through these images as if I'm begging for them to be torn from my hands. The feeling grows and grows in my pained chest until i'm a seizing ball of tears on the couch and my uncle has taken the album from my arms.

He sets it on the armchair and picks me up to set me on his lap as he always has, allowing me to tear myself apart with the acidity of my tears and the clawing of my nails at my pale skin that holds more scars than untouched parts of me, rocking me as he always has until I give up at trying to hurt my finite self.

"We missed it all." I sob on his shoulder

"But we're here now." he soothes as he strokes my hair down my back

"Tătic, I don't understand how accepting of this you manage to be."

"I accepted it the minute I met you. I had to. Raising a child is no simple task, at least not if you try doing it correctly. At this point, I've been given the time to process these things and adapt to the thought and realization that they happened whether or not I was-or we were there to experience them." he starts

I allow my expression to speak for me, telling him to continue because of how lost I feel.

"Steve understands us that way, it's like a secret code we have with each other..other than knowing each other for so long before the fall of our futures back then." he explains as he pulls away