Ah, how could we have known, child? How could we have known?

Even on the day of the funeral, he’d told his mother.

“My twin is calling me,” he said.

“He’s lonely down there, all alone in the earth,” he said.

We thought it was just his grief.

“He misses his brother,” we told ourselves.

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Then he stopped eating, stopped drinking. His face grew pale and hollow, thin as a spoon.

One morning, we woke to the sound of his mother’s screams. His bed was empty.

We found him at the cemetery.

He had dug up his brother’s fresh grave with his bare hands,

wrapped himself around the shrouded body,

and left his last breath there, in the dirt.

We buried them together, side by side.

And sealed the grave again.