[ WP ] I died today . This is how .

It was n't always going to end the way it did. That's what I told myself as I lay there, on the cusp of non-beingness, thinking about things I had n't thought before and were n't like to think about in the future. I wanted to touch upon it all, to open my mouth wide open and gobble up the world, no, the universe, its strangeness and its familiarity and the notions that are too powerful even to bear the name of a word; I wanted every fresh and combustible sensation of taste to last forever. There was, however, nothing new in that. 
 
 My grandma used to say that I had too much of a penchant for adventure. My impetuous habit of getting into trouble would be the end of me. Or as she put it: Someday soon I'd break my fool neck, and she was n't going to be sorry about it neither. She called it like she saw it. Grandma was my favorite. 
 
 The day I died she had been long dead. My mother and father too, though they went before. I had a sister, but I had n't spoken to her in years. I do n't know where she is or what she is doing with her life. Sometimes, when one of those moods take me, I try to close my eyes and imagine. She is always the same then, smiling in a way I do n't think I ever saw her smile. There she is making some grand creation in a great flower-tiled kitchen, or taking a walk with what must be her kid, leading him up a grassy hillock, or having the back of her hand kissed by a man in a suit who obviously cares for her. I, on the other hand, did n't particularly care for her during those final years. I thought about her from time to time, and sometimes I even caught myself mouthing a prayer for her well-being. It was almost as if it had become an inveterate habit to reminisce about her, like I would sometimes reminisce about Grandma. It had n't always been like that. 
 
 We were like twins when we were growing up. We looked alike and we thought alike. Even our names sounded similar. Emma and Emmett, The Conquerors of the World. We'd say it in a bright officious chorus and then we'd laugh like kids laugh, not realizing that the silence that follows is bittersweet. Whenever we had guests we'd delight ourselves by dressing up in each other's clothes to pretend. It used to fascinate me, how they treated me differently when they thought I was a girl. It was like I had shorn a hole into my mattress and fallen through, and there was the world, almost exactly as it had been before but inverted like the image of a mirror, and every physical reaction had been brought about by a cause that was just slightly off. At first I enjoyed it. But it was I who called it off in the end. Emma, I think, would have been perfectly happy to go on playing me forever. 
 
 This story just became structurally complicated, and I'm not in the mood. Thanks if you read, though, and sorry for the total absence of any form of payoff.
