I looked down at June and she looked up at me, her eyes bottomless pools of navy. We stared at each other, our gazes unwavering while a bond made up of blood, brain waves, and particles, pulled out of the atmosphere from sisterhoods that had come before us, was tightly knit together.

My mother stayed uncharacteristically still, smiling down on both of us. Her scent of French perfume, sour milk, and skin that had sweated out a baby draped itself all over us. Her closeness and unsolicited love, combined with the emotions my new sister inspired, brought me to tears. They rolled down my cheeks and gathered in short, toddler sobs in my throat.

My mother misunderstood, thinking my crying was out of sadness for the new arrival, that I saw June as competition for her affection. She swept my sister out of my arms and against her chest like I was only moments away from chucking the bundle right onto the floor.

My mother didn’t understand unconditional love. She didn’t know what it looked like, smelled like, or felt like. That’s why she could never really understand my relationship with June. She was in awe of it as much as she was suspicious of it, fluctuating between believing it was a coup against her and taking it as an example of her superior parenting. No matter her outlook, June and I stayed steadfast in our love for each other. We had to. It was the only way to survive our mother.

I don’t know if all dead people are assigned to just one person. It makes sense, though, that I’m assigned to June. Basically, I was assigned to her the day she was born, and now that she’s dead, she’s the one I haunt.

Being dead isn’t as bad as everyone imagines. It’s lonely in some ways, but peaceful, and there’s a contentment that comes with it that you’ve searched for all through life but never found. Perhaps because in so many ways we spend our lives running from death, so when it finally comes we have no choice but to accept it. Gone are the fear, the avoidance, and the desperation that living so often brings.

No more insecurities, guilt, shame, or regrets. There’s just no point to them anymore. Full memories have disappeared for me as well, my entire life presenting like a fuzzy dream that happened in the course of one restless sleep. I know who the main players were and have some sense of myself but can’t gather together the full details of actual events that made up my lifetime. The only clear memory I have is of the moment of my death, and I try my best to avoid reliving that one.