Halloween. Blue sister.

Drunk.
More alcohol than I drink.
More than I like to drink.
Rum and diet coke - and then another.
Because Lee hands them to me.
And if she is drinking, wants me to drink, I will be here.
Because I will not leave her alone ever again.

I paint the costumes. Blue swirls. Pictish warrior. Because we are warriors, she and I. We've fought back our demons, shoved them in corners. We are alive in spite of the prognosis.

I sit on the dark patio with her friends. So youthful.
It's strange, being here with all this youth. I don't belong - although they are too drunk to realize it.
I feel perverse, with the years separating us, looking on hungrily. Admiration. Desire for their strength, sense of invincibility, immortality.

I listen to her laugh. Tell jokes.
She is as lively as she's ever been.

I worry about the alcohol. Drugs. I don't see the drugs but I worry they're there still. I worry about a future truncated, curtailed. This is what I always worry about with her: that the future shrinks instead of expands. So caught up in the making-ends-meet now, the present pain, and never considering or knowing the infinite possibilities.

Then, afterwards, stumble home in the dark together.
Arm curled around her shoulder.

She talks about us. I was twelve when she was born.
Fifteen when I became her surrogate mother. Protector, though I didn't understand she needed protecting.

She still needs protecting. From her own tendency towards nihilism and self-obliteration, self-hatred, her expectation or hope that this dash across a dark street, motorcycle ride without a helmet, will make the decision for her. She hates herself because that was all she ever knew - growing up constrained and abused - and because the things she's done reinforced her self-loathing. I know this particular brand of despair and it terrifies me.

As I talk to god about her, I feel helpless. If all her darkness and pain came suddenly onto my shoulders, crashing into my own, it would certainly take me to the edge of a cliff. If there is god, then take it from her. If there are miracles, let them be miraculous healing. Miraculous living. Beautiful future. If you are god, be god. Be enough to absorb and consume the pain.