without.
"we went together, but he died alone."
george is without,
& he wants his best friend back.
he wants to see that bright, freckled face – smiling, laughing, always – and he wants it to speak. he wants muggle pens back behind the ears, because that means he's still thinking, and he'd be worried if he came up with another idea and forgot about it.
[ missing messy handwriting and ink smudges
because they're identical to his. ]
and most of all, he wants fred to love again.
because he doesn't like it when there's a body in a casket and it's coldcoldcold.
realism was never one of george's stronger points.
fred dreamed, he dreamed, sleeping while awake and awake while sleeping.
and they could do whatever they wanted because you can't stop two people at once.
but now, it's different. everything's real – real & tangible & actual & touchable & it's all happening to him – and it burns like fire, stings like wasps and feels like something else that's not so pleasant. that face that looks just like his own is cold, and it's not smiling. he could stare for hours but the ghosts of smiles have departed with fred, because that's all he ever was.
[ take fred's arm, his leg, maybe his head. the smile would still stick like it had been charmed or taped. ]
he's not thinking anymore, brain blank like the eulogy he's supposed to be writing. there's no pen behind those ears.
more likely, a patch of liquid eraser where the jokes and the laughter and the memories were painted.
& george misses fred, because without him it's not right.
he misses counting powder puffs of cirrus clouds and fred trying to finger the stratus ones.
one – two – three – four – and they disappear in the sunlight
or with a gust of wind.
too fast.
not slow enough to connect stars with wandlight and say final goodbyes.
george is five seconds away from falling apart.
/fivefourthreetwoone.
but he doesn't.
[ impracticable to cry when fred's not crying.
it happens to one, or it happens to none. ]
blank eyes look up at him, and it's almost too much when he speaks to a comatose mirror.
"fred."
speak? no, croak.
"you're not allowed to leave."
george is already tired of having a conversation with deaf ears.
though perhaps, somewhere, fred is listening.
so, he'll keep on talking.
"i've lost my other half. i miss you."
he wants to share stories with those shaded eyes and that sharpened tongue. it isn't possible.
fred said impossibility was a stupid word.
he makes a note to himself : do not fall apart.
(exaggeration. people can't literally fall to pieces.)
( ( truth. he might. ) )
it hits george now that he can't hold fred tight and finite incantatem and bring him back to life.
maybe it's that he's scared to touch his twin
and he would shatter into tiny pieces people can't pick up.
but george has nothing to give his brother now.
nothing but lovelovelove and sweet words he won't ever hear.
he won't be doing the service.
digging up memories was digging up decaying bodies.
a hollowed out face, gaunt and pale, vacant eyes.
[ remnants of a summer afternoon spent in a treehouse. ]
give him three seconds after a funeral to think.
it would take him less than three, whole, figurative seconds to find his brother again
down a deep, white tunnel.
three more excruciating seconds, or however many years left in his life.
what's george going to be doing in fifty years?
waiting for fred.
[ waiting another second just seems silly now. ]
"georgie?"
he feels a sudden fork of lightning in his throat because his mother has never called him that until now.
only fred said that.
only freddie.
( he would give anything to bring fred back. )
but george can't be his extra set of lungs because he's using his, and still running out of air.
he can't make his heart beat when he wishes his to finish up already.
and he can't have fred lean on him when he can barely stand straight himself.
"one moment." he says to his mother, and he runs to the vacated front of the room where he's got a dead brother and a dead heart.
molly knew she'd lose both of her twins today.
[ in cruel finality. ]
george looks at his brother,
refusing to let tears run down fred's face.
'cause he was always the stronger one of the two.
and the world ended
the day george forgot who he was inside.
sure, he was a person.
a person with a face and some feelings and some thoughts.
his face was fred's face and his thoughts were fred's thoughts and his feelings were fred's feelings.
and he was lost, for the first time in his life, because he didn't have dual citizenship in bodies and words.
[ the last time he sees fred's face.
until he looks in the mirror at home. ]
he won't ever come within twenty million miles of anything like him again, but he figures if he does, he'll call it 'may second' and keep it in a cloudy glass bowl and watch it swim back and forth.
(waiting for its belly to meet the surface so he'll cry for something analogous, when all the old tears are used up.)
weasley-red hair crowds the room, with the exception of everyone-hogwarts.
professors & friends & family & nobody's with him.
the air in the room is unfriendly and negated, and hanging in the air, like a cobwebbed mobile, something like static waves.
[ a 1920's song nobody's ever written, and nobody will ever hear the words to. ]
lace curtains and family photos that look naïve and happy.
and naïve.
he misses his brother.
he misses his best friend.
he misses fred.
george stands with his family & more alone than a tree in winter.
[ george misses his leaves, too. ]
he's a broken man in a muted photograph,
his life something like a taut smile,
and a soul that will live in houses
and not homes.