He died on a Sunday. The sky was dark as the clouds, rolling on top of each other, fighting back and forth until one another won. Angry tears fell from the black sky in a whirl of miniature tornados. Spinning around and around they went, the murky colors of the wind never touching the ground as the top reached for the sky.
Fog consumed the damp graveyard. Dew coated the dead, shriveled up grass while the dead oaks cringe in the shadows, weeping for the dead as their branches curved like broken wings from a baby raven, bent and twisted while they took root to the dead, cold black heartless ground.
The spiders crawl to and fro over their white webs of art. Each one delicately hooked on a branch or rock that hung near the soil of the decaying carcasses of no return. It was quite sad that my dear sweet brother had died on a Sunday, for tomorrow was his twentieth birthday.
I still had his birthday gift with me. He was never the type of demanding things from the female population but was a gentleman at heart. Always thanking someone, anyone for that matter. Waiting on himself instead of the men who relaxed and sat on their rump for a living, waiting for their wives to fix them supper.
A bile hatred washes over me, thinking to all the men who had treated my mother and me in the past like we were white trash, no better than the next women who walked down the sidewalk.
Black strands of my hair danced in front of my pale face. The colors of the wind flashing before my violet eyes. It was nothing beautiful but sad and depressing. Black, gray and the color of blood muddled together in the atmosphere where we humans breathed our supple of oxygen, not knowing we inhaled all the pigments of nature as intended.
I twirl my finger tips against the soft, smooth silky rose petal in my palm. The color violet being sucked at as the atmosphere claimed its right on it. Like a lightening whip, the color flowed around us, jumbling and cluttering against the gloomy misfortune of the turnout for today.
My mother who decided to dress in solid white, like an angle sent from heaven cradled the headstone of my deceased brother. Tears of salt and blood dripped from my mother's pasty face, her flushed lips pouty and swollen as her nose remained an unattractive red.
I advert my eyes with a heavy heart. The realization still occurring to me that I wouldn't see my brother's face again, to hear his voice ever again, or to hear the slightest thank you after ironing his clothes. My own self sorrow consumes me like an ocean. The tears that would never come finally released. The taste was bitter to my mouth, wrong and unpleasant.
I squeeze my palm, wrapping the rose around my flesh until the pressure broke and the thorns pierced my skin, breaking it as the blood poured out and down my wrist in drops. I grit my teeth as I slowly relax my hand, watching the rose slide down until it softly thumped against the ground.
"You always said you'd watch over us." I whisper with a bowed head, defeat finally crashing down on existence in my life. It was hopeless. The signs that I had been looking for never came. The sound of raven wings never approached my ears as for the sun to break just once from the heavy clouds that always covered Moon Scar village. The scent of death wouldn't be washed away and my brother's death was like any other: forgotten and damned for eternity. To never cross the border of the afterlife.
I turn my back on the headstone, feeling my heart rip in two for my brother's absence that already tore at me. I took a footstep toward my vehicle beyond the graveyard gate that blocked me from the world of the death and the world of the living.
I take a deep breath, inhaling some of the depressing black magic that played in the atmosphere around us. The sweet bitter of victory of the dead clear to me as I take another step away from my brother's tomb. The world of night had yet taken another victim for their bidding of horror torment.
My hand wraps around the cold, iron metal. I give a push and the gate gently creeks open. I lift my foot and almost step out but stop.
The wings of ravens shatter the silence like singing harps. The breeze shifts and changes course, taking all the vile filth with it. The last colors of death hang in the air but no longer, they wilt as if some pleasances is too strong enough for their evil ways. Finally, a warm ray of sun disperse the heavy clouds, breaking out and shinning over my brothers headstone.
Perched on the headstone was a solid black raven. The softest pair of brown eyes met mine. A smile breaks across my face without my consent while the raven gives a wink. The violet rose splattered with my own blood soaked up the color quickly and the violet was soon replaced with a shimmering red of clean health. I look back but only to see my brother flying into the sun with transparent wings of all bright colors as he flew to the heavens in grace.