Dandelions

I have brothers, two men who have the same genetic parents. I have no living relationship to them. Two people who loomed large in my early childhood, lived in my imagination long after, until the reality emerged and the fantasy faded. I have told them every secret, every care and worry - but only in their absence.

It's not completely gone, the habitual conversations with idealized brothers. I still reflexively want their attention and approval, interest at some perceptible threshold. Proof of life? Or working through ossified, imagined slights? They make no effort to contact me, and I wonder if they even know I am estranged? I've faded from their worlds, that part of my existence vanishes even from living memory. They are hardly real to me, as I must be a mere footnote to them.

Trouble is, I don't know. I surmise. Like all loss that involves even the loss of knowing. Will they one day contact me, demanding to know how I could turn my back on them and their parents? Or have they let me drift into the realm of footnotes, 'oh, yes, and we have a sister, but we have lost contact'?

So, I live with the unknowable, as we all do. I try to allow the illusions to pass through, blow them along like dandelions gone to seed.