Swerve

Hazel Emily Kregaui, 32
Missing, foul play likely, body never recovered
At the opening of the retrospective filled with architecture sketches and
suited men paintings, and recreated scenes from famous street protests in
miniature, my bleached skeleton was arranged in my green work overalls standing
at a blackboard with an illegible scroll across it
A number of visitors would mill round in the vicinity of me, and mouth to their
companion:
«Her sister, never found her you know? How sad.»
Or:
«Is that supposed to be Hazel, how crass?»
Lilian gave a little speech about how the Kregaui sisters were still going
strong, and that I had never really left. Indicating me in the corner.
There was some mild low laughter at this
«I loved Hazel for who she was.»
«I know her inside and out.»
«We'll always be a team.»
I was a museum piece. Surrounded by art that was viewed and reviewed in the
context of the absence. Of my former, now permanent self. Art that meant
nothing to me anymore. If I still had a stomach, I would be sick to it from
being so aesthetic. All of the things I have not known, and have not done,
and have not changed, and have not become. Lilian looks so happy,
the heroine of her generation. Not our parents but ours. Kregauian had entered
the dictionary that year and she’d got to re-draft the definition.
Lilian had maintained our trajectory even when I had wanted to swerve