Led by the glow of the street lights ...
Sometimes I have to say it aloud, just to make it real. I won't believe it otherwise.
My brother is dead.
Sometimes I just think of it like; "Oh, TA has fucked up again, only this time it kinda hurts me." And then I realize, this is the last time he can hurt us or himself. I don't think about where he is now, because I not at the point of even fully accepting it. Facts first, then stretches of faith. And the facts are;
TA walked into a convenience store and cashed his check. The attacker must have known this, because he demanded the money immediately after he walked out. This was seen by a jogger going past. TA gave it to him, and then they struggled over the weapon. TA escaped and ran into a driveway, where the attacker caught up with him, and shot him twice, once in the abdomen and once below his left nipple.
I wonder if he knew this was the end. TA was a runner. Football was his life in high school, and he was fast as fuck.
I wonder if each breath he drew in while sprinting across that seedy parking lot was punctuated by thoughts of Strawn, and high school and his girlfriend, Amber, and jumping off the roof onto the trampoline and arguing with me and pestering Kera and Bowie and driving a hundred mph across town, even over railroad tracks.
Was it just pure adrenaline? "Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, I'm running out of breath and places to run."
Maybe he was just irritated, like things of this nature had happened before, and he was just pissed and in motion.
I like to think it is one of the last two, actually. A man in his prime, adrenaline pumping, blinded from rational thought, just running, running towards that last yard, that final stretch to the touchdown, his finest hour. Unknowingly, his last score.