To My Brother

Your name was Will. You came first. And for a while, you were going to be the only one.

That was the plan. One child. That's all my parents could afford. That's all they ever thought they'd need.

And then, you died.

Before I ever arrived. Before you ever got a chance to become you.

And the story of our family bent around that loss. Not loudly, not in daily conversation, but in shadow, in quiet, in the subtle gravity of absence.

They didn't talk about you much—not until I was older, and even then only in brief, careful fragments, as if saying your name too loudly might shatter something.

But I saw the way their eyes dimmed when they said it. I heard the reverence in their voice, and I felt the invisible weight of you—at every holiday, every birthday, every quiet night in a house they'd built for you first.

And then came me: the cosmic runner-up, the alternate timeline, the child that wasn't supposed to be.

Except fate doesn't care about budgets or grief. And I won the damn lottery because our parents—they were amazing. They were everything. They gave me a childhood steeped in love, gentleness, and second chances.

But sometimes, late at night, I feel like I'm holding a ticket that never should have been mine.

And I wonder, what did I take away from you? What life would you have lived? What friends would have laughed at your jokes? What bikes would you have wrecked in the summer sun? What family might have grown from you? Nieces and nephews that don't exist now. Stories that were never told. Birthdays that never happened.

I live with a strange, silent guilt. Not loud, not paralyzing, but always present.

You were meant to be, and instead, I am.

And some days, I just don't know how to carry that.

Will I meet you one day? Up there or out there? Wherever afterlives? Will you look at me with understanding? Or hurt? Will you recognize the way I tried to honor the space you left behind?

I talk to you sometimes—not out loud, just inside. And when I visit our parents' graves, I see your name there too, right next to theirs, tucked quietly in the earth like a page that was never written.

So here it is.

I don't know how to make it right, but I carry you with me in memory, in shadow, and in love.

This is a letter I'll never send, but I hope wherever you are, you know that I've tried to live a life that leaves room for you, even if the world never got to.