Letter to My Dead Sister
Wybie Santiny
5/23/21
​
Dear -----,
​
Are you dead?
​
The answer to this question might seem obvious to people who aren’t me.
​
How could you be dead, when I sometimes see you walking on the side of the highway on my way to work? How could you be dead, when I was walking home from school one day and saw you in the passenger’s seat of your friend’s red truck? I waved. You didn’t see me. Could you be a ghost when your existence is still warmed by smoke and made whole by those who surround you?
​
Your school report card hasn’t stopped coming in the mail. My mother pays your phone bill. You still react to those stupid GIFs Dad sends in the family group chat. My coworkers, who are friends with you, speak with the linking verbs is and are instead of was and were. In every possible way, I cannot escape the fact that somewhere out there, a street or two away, your heart is still beating. Your coffin calls out to me.
My brain says you didn’t die. You just left. To my heart, you died the moment the last of your things were moved out of our—my house.
​
It was easy to ignore your death at first. Finally, a room to myself, some alone time. I hadn’t yet realized that you’d taken something from me. Not when I still saw your grave in passing, when I had something for your corpse to gain. A little cash for you, a little weed so we could laugh together like we were kids sipping helium again, a friend of yours that tolerated me enough to invite me along—enough to keep your memory alive, enough to create a veil for the rot and the moss and the nicotine growing within your ribcage. I would happily strip my skin off if it meant keeping a piece of you alive for a little while longer, to keep your skeleton hidden so I could pretend it was okay.
​
The realization came in bits and pieces.
​
You stopped answering my texts. After three weeks of working together, you stopped showing up. I couldn’t listen to my favorite band anymore, because it had been your favorite too. I couldn’t look at pictures or videos of you when I was alone. Everything I heard about you came from somebody else’s mouth.
​​
I let you slip away. Not because I wanted to, but because there was no more flesh to cling to—your bones turned to dust in my hands and like some funny little joke, when I decided I wanted to be done too, I couldn’t wash you off.
So, I tried to deny it.
​
She just can’t stand being around you. the text read.
​
I tried to run and hide. I like to think I’m pretty good at the hiding part. When I was younger, I hid from my parents because I hit a boy in the head with a shovel and he told me he’d snitch. I hid so well that my mother called the police to search for me. The search lasted hours. I was grounded from that little boy’s yard for months when I was seen hiding behind a chair that was the same color as my shirt.
​
Once, when we were visiting family in Ohio, we played hide-and-seek. I hid behind a counter, tucked into the dark nook and curled in on myself as small as I could get my body to contort. I fell asleep because nobody ever found me.
​
But you know I’ve never been a good runner. The year I quit cross-country it was because I came in last.
It was only a matter of time before your ghost found me. What would I do then?
She just can’t stand being around you. the text read.
​
I don’t like to cry. I rarely let myself break.
​
The night your mother texted mine, I cried so hard I couldn’t speak. I screamed. I cursed you. I hated myself for all the times I defended you. I hated myself for all the times I didn’t. I felt like you’d ripped my heart from my chest and made it your own. I didn’t realize that piece of me had been gone since the beginning, tucked away in some cardboard box in your new room. I didn’t realize that what I felt wasn’t heartbreak, just the gaping absence of it, of you.
​
Can I ask you something? Why did you lie? Did you hate us so much that you felt you had to lie to avoid being around us?
​
Your sister was at my house the other day with your brother, my friend said to me.
​
Is it just me? Did I do something wrong?
​
Did I imagine it?
​
Sometimes I find myself wishing we could just fix it, but how can you fix a relationship that’s so broken the only pieces left are the clothes you didn’t want still hanging in our—my closet?
​
Well, anyway, I find myself staring at the ceiling at night, wishing it was the boards holding your bed up because you always wanted top bunk. I wish the sounds of some YouTuber on your overheated MacBook could drown out the chorus of cicadas outside my window when I’m trying to sleep. It’s like they’re laughing at me. I wish I could listen to the end theme of Star vs. The Forces of Evil without crying like a child again.
Your dog still scratches at our front door. Sometimes it’s a solace to know I’m not the only one who misses how things used to be.
​
Why are you here? I asked my mother.
​
I’m buying groceries for your sister, she replied.
​
I talked to your corpse a couple days ago. We were headed in the same direction. We laughed about stupid shit we used to do when we were kids. How we used Nerf guns to reenact The Hunger Games in our backyard, that one time I pretended to be possessed to scare you, how we liked the floods because it meant we could pretend our Littlest Pet Shops got caught in a hurricane. When we split and parted ways down different streets, I wanted to cry.
​
On the way home, I wondered if you felt it too—the lack. Or were you just taunting me? I guess I just want my stuff back.
​
Your big sister,
------
p.s. your birthday is soon. what should i get you?
—
3/31/25
Dear little sister,
How are you?
It’s funny. I feel like I should just text this to you, instead of speaking to some hypothetical version of you in my own head.
​
I like to imagine that you’re okay. Maybe even happy? It hurts me that I don’t think of you as often as I should, when it seems like such little time has passed since you were all I thought about. The hurt is dull though, this old bruise buried deep beneath layers of skin, tucked into the heart. It’s been there so long, you could press your thumb into it and I’d feel the impression of your fingerprint more than I’d feel the pain.
​
happy new years :) i love you
happy new years love you too :)
​
I can’t remember the last time I cried. I used to cry over you all the time—not that it was ever really your fault. Or that it wasn’t mine. Now it seems so silly, but I think everything feels like the world is falling apart when you’re 15 and unmedicated. Did you ever cry over me? Is that selfish to ask? There was a time when I couldn’t imagine we’d ever live in separate rooms, much less two different states, miles and miles away from our childhood pullout trundle. Do you remember the angel statues? The one with the kids in the bed, the little girl tucked under the covers in terror and the boy with the flashlight, peeking under the bed to scare the Devil away. A couple of days ago, I remember we used to play with those little figurines—gifts from Grandma that became late-night entertainment, drowning out the shouting, filling in the holes in the drywall. If stomping made its way down the hall, we’d duck under the covers, our little hearts pitter-pattering—I swear we shared a chest then, when I could feel the vibrations of your shaking ribs, your small, restrained lungs. Being scared together is the closest we got to understanding each other. I never knew what to ask you, how to show you I was there. We didn’t have good role models for that sort of thing, and Mom always knew how to make me quiet.
​
did u hear ab Ryan?
i did :(
so crazy man and then today
there was a murder suicide it
was on Fox News
​
dude yeah I heard about that
actually crazy
no fr the island doesn’t even
have that many people to
begin with
​
Did you ever quit nic? The smell of cigarette smoke makes me sick nowadays. Did you know Dad started smoking again? Did you know that he ever tried to quit in the first place? I’ve been sober from THC for at least a year now. I don’t know if it’s something that ever crosses your mind, but I think about our father’s role in your life often. I think he should’ve tried harder to be there for you. If he’d made a more clear effort, if he’d shown that he loved you as much as I loved you, things could’ve turned out different. I never understood that when I was younger—that the fault wasn’t entirely on my mother, or yours. It’s funny how large of a part fathers have in the shaping of our lives. Maybe if I could go back with this new understanding, it wouldn’t have felt like we let you go so easily. Sometimes, I resent our parents for giving up on you. I hope Dad thinks of you often. It’s selfish of me, but I hope he feels bad. He could’ve been there.
​
bring menew when you come!!!!!
PLEASE
​
HAHA
i might
i miss his fat self
​
But that’s an even sillier thought, isn’t it? I couldn’t fix our parents’ mistakes. I’m not even responsible for them in the first place. You didn’t ever die, you aren’t some ghost haunting my past, and these aren’t problems that can’t be resolved. The real ghost has always been this—trauma, yours and mine, lorded over us by our parents and never truly healed. You even visited recently, and stayed for a week at our parents’ place in the guest room. I didn’t know you’d gotten into cooking, but I think of the meal you made for us every now and again. Soft, warm rice melting in the mouth, steeped in broth—rice reminds me of you more than it reminds me of home. Have you seen our grandparents recently? I think they’d like it—the rice, and seeing you. I should call them. I should call you.
​
when r u getting here?
so something came up
at the store … they’re missing
a lot of money and blaming it
on me and they had issues
getting the tickets so im probably
not gonna be coming anymore
​
When you were here last, we traded Littlest Pet Shops. I remember the cold winter wind as we walked beneath the awnings of the strip mall, our fingers tearing eagerly at the blind box’s cardboard. There’s a special kind of joy in being able to buy the toys our parents refused to buy when we were young. You hadn’t dressed for the Ohio weather, and the air had brought pink to your nose and ears. You sniffled as you pulled the plastic creature out of its tissue paper wrapping. I had gotten the axolotl, and you unearthed a less-than-cute Schnauzer dog. I could see it in the look in your face that you hated it before you even said anything about how ugly it was. We laughed and I happily handed off my prize. As the animals passed between our fingers, I felt closer to you than I had in years. The dog you gave me in return sits atop the shelf in my living room, right in front of the TV, a proud reminder that things aren’t like what they used to be.
​
There are a lot of things I should say to you. It all comes down to the fact that I should talk to you more often, really. Nowadays I’m constantly reminded that things don’t have to be how they were. That includes you, you know. I hope you think so too.
Always your big sister,
Wybie
p.s.
hey!! how are you? :)