The stairs creaked with my bones as I headed down stairs for my morning tea. I passed through the hall every day at the same time, but I hadn't looked up in years. I couldn't face the searching faces of those who had left me in my solitude.
The thud of the newspaper on the door was early. It made me look up, it made me face the dusty pictures of the past. Then I saw her eyes burning through the mountain of dust accumulated on her picture on the wall.
My little sister, Lily, who no one ever made grow up, until it was too late. Her room is still plastered with the maps she once treasured, where every country was circled at least once, and the bookshelves of her childhood are still flooded with the languages she never finished learning, now dusty and untouched.
I smiled at her ambitious dreams of being a pilot, or the captain of some renowned ship, or an explorer of the corners of the earth. Her visions always changed, but their underlying need for escape never left them, not even in her death.
By the time I had to write her obituary, I had already received ample practice after writing my father's , and step-mother's, if only they could have stopped there, my abandonment on this earth makes my heart ache like my bones, and now my failing vision fools me as eye see her eyes burning in every reflection.
