Fertilizer
by Sadie Kuhnle
Case Western Reserve University
Sadie Kuhnle is a freshman student at Case Western Reserve University studying psychology with a minor in creative writing. Through the mediums of visual art, poetry, and short fiction, they explore the experiences of others and themself.
It was a summer funeral. That’s something I’m sure of even though my eyes felt numb, even though I felt vaguely butchered. Crisp black suits, black dresses melting to tar in the heat, poured onto rows of folding chairs. I remember thinking it was a beautiful day to be at our parent’s farm. I almost laughed out loud during the service; I can tell everyone my brother went to live on a farm. Even funnier, I know I won’t say anything. My dad gave the eulogy. All I heard was the hush of heavenly wind over stalks of wheat and corn and sunflowers. I’m so used to my coworkers playing sweet in front of customers that it made my eyes strain to see them undercooked, formless, shaking my hand with pinched scarecrow faces. I shook their hands, and my hands shook, and I ducked into the house. When I bolted up the stairs, my gaze stuck forward, away from the hung portraits of us growing up together. I went up to my old bedroom and stared at the recipe cards in my closet. Every pastry under the brutal Sun. I know. Me and my brother had the same handwriting. I’ve only ever looked like him but younger. All of this, I know. The funeral was 3 weeks and 5 days ago, and my brother died 1 month, 2 weeks, and 4 days ago. I haven’t said it aloud, and I don’t remember what the wind or their hands felt like, but I know what was there.
And I know where I am. Handing out pastries and coffee and smiling so naturally. Sometimes, the muscles in my cheeks feel stretched and folded. I hold my ground, butchering the rotten parts of myself until I am presentable, food-safe, clean. My voice contorts loud and bright like sun off the lake. When a customer asks where the older one is, I count 3-5-1-2-4, 3-5-1-2-4, 3-5-1-2-4 until I easily tell him that my brother won’t be in today. When the rush melts down to a slow trickle, the cow in the mural on the wall looks at me like it knows I never learned how to butcher anything.
When two identical twin brothers walk up to the counter, my hands start shaking, and I pretend to be a part of the mural until my coworker steps in. Then, I calmly walk into the janitor’s closet. In those few square feet, I become something else. I become the cryptid my brother used to scare me with, the titan whose footprints made corn mazes; the piles of dead field mice the cat would bring for us in the morning, that we’d lay in the compost and that she’d bring right back to us until they started to fall apart; the half-eaten dog we found one night, barely alive enough to quake and howl. I become an only child.
I don’t know what it feels like to lose a brother. I only know what it feels like 1 month, 2 weeks, and 4 days after.