Shards and Ashes

for our parents together. There was him, before, and now there is only me.

I shiver, looking at the paper without seeing it. I knew what it was. Dropletters were a painful burden. Everyone wrote them, everyone left them. It was a commonly held custom to burn them. That I could do.

I don’t know if that means I have to read it.

I don’t know if I want to.

Instead, I push my way into the smallest of the quiet, empty rooms in my quiet, empty quarters.

“Come on,” I say to myself, and the cat. “Let’s get on with it.”

Inside the tiny room, the room where my family’s secrets had always been hidden, there is only one object. An enormous cabinet.

That’s where I keep it.

That’s where we’d always kept them.

Hidden inside the top drawer of the big blue cabinet, in a box lined with velvet, in a pouch lined with satin.

I ignore the empty pouches next to it, crumpled inside empty boxes. The ones left holding nothing but empty strings.

Not now, I think.

Never.

I turn my attention back to the only true thing left in the cabinet.

“It’s beautiful,” I breathe, opening the drawer and taking the pouch with both hands. I’m talking to myself, just as I always do. Every time I come to see my necklace.

I would never let anyone else see it.

My secret.

I smooth it in my lap, crouching in the heap of clothes piled on the bed. I immediately forget everything but the pouch, as soft as water in my hands. Perfect. Cool. I wish I was the pouch. Or the box. Or even the big blue drawer.

I wish I was the thing that held my necklace of raindrops safe, never spending it, never losing it. I wish I’d keep it inside me always, the way the pouch does, never threatened in any way at all.

Never threatening.

Never anything.

How do I feel? Scared. Small. Like there is nothing I can do that will ever be worthy of the treasure inside that satin purse.

I can’t let myself think how much treasure is inside it.

And I can’t let anyone else know.

I slide to my heels next to the dresser and close my eyes, crumpling the letter in my hand.

Damn him. Damn him for leaving. Damn him for wanting to leave.

It is left to me. Time to mourn, again. Like before. Like always.

As I did for my parents.

As I did for Hana and Issa.

And now Rama.

The tears slide down my cheeks, surprising me.

I did not know tears could be so cold. The coldness of my tears frightens me. I stop crying.

Instead, I open my letter and begin to read it to the cat. Just as I did the four that came before.

Rama is waiting for me.

3. R A M A

My sister.

I know. I understand.

You are angry. You think I am weak.

I am.

I am unmoored, as lost as the little boats in the harbor after the floods.

Ropeless. Rudderless. Anchorless.

I can’t live my life like you, if you can call what you do living. I can’t hide away in our chambers, wasting my days and nights.

I know life has a cost. I know adventures are expensive.

You can get hurt, you can die, you can drop.

I know.

I know everything you want to scream at me right now.

I don’t care.

I had to see for myself.

I had to go.

In the last year, I saw every phase of the moon, from every continent on the planet. I shivered on the frozen ground in the middle of a wolf pack before the dawn, listening to them howl and scream at each other. I followed the curve of a river down falls and through gorges. I stood in the path of a mother bear. I painted chalk circles on a sacred elephant. I ran with the bulls down the streets of a crowded village. I watched the sunrise with a beautiful woman.

It was worth it.

All of it.

Once I determined to blow through my life, drop by drop, I knew I could not look back. I could not stop.

Every day of the last year was a transaction. I knew, every time I handed another precious drop into a Counter, that I was going to leave you, and soon.

The thing I realized was, it didn’t matter when I left. Not to us, our story. The bond, my heart, yours—everything between us had already happened.

Has happened.

You’re big sister; I’m little brother.

You will always be my sister. In death and in life. That was never going to change. It hasn’t now. But the rest of my life needed to. It had to begin.

I know I was your younger brother. I know you were supposed to drop first. But Jai, you’re not going to. You’re too afraid.

Let me give you this one gift. Let me tell you what I have learned.

Don’t be afraid to live.

Your life will be long, but it won’t be life.

I have loved someone. I have been loved. I have been here, everywhere.

I haven’t left a mark on the world, but is that so bad? Considering how deeply the world has marked me?

Know this.

When I drop tonight, I will be thinking of you.

I’m not scared.

I’m ready.

And I hope you will find your way to your own last drop, before your beads leave you to drop in your bed alone, a thousand years from now.

If nothing changes, and you keep going like this, you will. Live forever.

But eternity at what price, big sister?

I crumple the letter in my hand and hold it toward the candle.

The edge of the envelope catches on fire, and I drop it into the brass bowl in the center of the room.