text: Dead Not Gone I am dead not gone, I am as here as I was the night I was murdered. I still feel the pain, if not more, I have no human barriers holding back the flood of emotions. I feel them from everyone. I still feel love and the loss of love. I watch as life begins to be normal again without me. I watched my love seal me away in the deep, dark corner of his mind. I watched him pretend with others, always looking for me in their faces, or the way they laugh. I watched him find love again, living a life with her that we had often talked about. He often visits telling me about his life, how happy he is, how sad he is that he can't live it with me. He named his daughter after me, to honor a memory of us and what we never had the chance to have together. He's grown older now, frail, his life has been beautiful. I know he will go to sleep for a very long time soon, and I am happy for him. My mother missed me fiercely, some nights more than others. Some nights she'd wail just as she did when she found out. Those nights I'd lie with her and sing to her, and I swear she'd hear me. She was never the same after I left. She wasn't whole. I'd talk to her while she slept, hoping I'd bring her mind to a happier place, but she'd wake with the same look in her eyes. She'd looked the same as the day she found out. She'd tuned out of life and I lost her to a place she could no longer hear me. I watched my little sister grow older than I ever was, she still insisted on calling me her big sister even when she was three times as old as I ever was, her life wasn't always kind to her. She lost a lot of trust in the world when she lost me. She looked for solace in things rather than people, anything to numb her from feeling sadness about me or our mother. She had to grow up a lot at a young age and will forever be sorry to her for that. She met a man after our mother died and he showed her kindness, he showed her how to love herself. She started to feel again, she lives a good life now. She helps those who seek the same numbness that she did not too long ago. I watched my killer, grow old and frail all alone. Life did not treated her well. She would often revel in that night. When she couldn't fight her urges. Just one quick motion and I was lifeless, all my hopes dreams ambitions gone and buried with me deep in that river. My killer often thought of ending it for herself and I willed all of my anger to make her. But she was a coward until the day she died in that nursing home all alone stinking of piss and death. Even the way she died was too good for her. I've watched everyone in my life grow old and live their lives without me. I am sad that I could never have children with my love. I'm sad I couldn't be there for my mom as that darkness took over her life. My sister will now forever be my big sister. I was taken too soon, and the world didn't slow down for me or for the ones I loved.