crossing the streets

I saw my little sister 

in the middle of the street 

her hands were splitted in two

her brown hair filled with blood 

She opened her eyes 

in the neighbourhood hospital 

and my heart stopped for one second

She said you used to take my hand 

when crossing the street. 

Then smiled. 

Her pain was yellow and flooding the hospital corridor. It had the smell of chlorine and blood. 

It went inside my lungs, that yellow smoke. 

It brought anger to me as it brought dispear to her husband and a deep sadness for my mother. 

My father freezed. I've never seen him freeze. 

He was contemplating a power he had no power upon, a power of injustice, a power of destiny, of catastrophic event. 

Looking death right in the face, except it wasn't his own, it was his smallest child. The one he swore to keep safe. 

Always.  

My mother took my hand. My mother was more scared than ever before. She kept saying my beautiful child, my beautiful child. I knew she was praying. 

Seeing my sister smile on the hospital bed, woked me up. I realized that in the face of death you have one shot. And she took it with dignity. 

She lived to cross again the streets, now with her 2 daughters in her arms. 

My father was never the same as before. Something in him freezed that day. 

My anger gets out in therapy and speaks Greek and swares and curses without cursing. 

My mother's pain got a depozit on her bones. 

It is never temporary. But we survive.