A personal essay exploring the funny sides of gired. It was accepted into a New York-based zine, Headstone 2. Stay tuned :)
My older brother was a Scorpio, born already intense and determined on the 8th of November. Ezra was fiercely dedicated to the things he loved and wanted in life, and completely unmoved by anything that didn’t pique his interest in the slightest. A fire sign through and through, and like any typical brother four years older, Ezra had the unbelievable resolution to find anything and everything to make me go absolutely insane. And it was made that much easier by having a sensitive, easily-bothered little sister — a Gemini.
Just to give some insight into how diabolical Ezra could be when it came to messing with me: Ezra didn’t like the idea of sharing with me and quickly devised a plan to get all the popcorn to himself while forced to share a bowl with his little sister during movie nights.
Eyes fixed to the screen and raising his hand slowly to his face, he would lick every. single. one. of his fingers before slowly lowering his hand back down, picking up a handful of popcorn, holding it in his hand for a few moments, and then coolly dropping the kernels back down into the bowl in preparation to repeat the process once again. Within seconds, with not as much as a single word or glance my way, I would be screaming at the top of my lungs. He had the entire bowl to himself. In those moments, you would think I was the one ruled by Mars.
March 2026 marks eleven years since I last saw my brother. I am now 22 years old, having been alive the same amount of time after his passing as I had been during his life. On previous anniversaries, I’ve written about the gradual realization that I’m not sad anymore and maybe haven’t been for quite some time. I've laughed more about it than I’ve cried because the loss of a person like Ezra manifests itself in unusual and often funny ways.
Over a decade later, my older brother is still finding ways to f•ck with me.
There is something that happens to me quite frequently when I’m meeting new people: a phenomenon called the do you have any siblings? question. Harmless in nature, but instantly opens up a Pandora's box of options presented to me in a choose-your-own-adventure format. **Ever: there are four paths you could take, each setting off a series of chain reactions that could determine your destiny — and create some really awkward moments with this person you’re talking to**
The first two paths are pretty straightforward.
Option 1* I say I am an only child. Conversation moves on. I am a liar. And really living up to that two-faced Gemini reputation.
Option 2* I say I have an older brother. No follow-up questions are asked. They were never that interested in hearing about it in the first place, and we move on. We avoid any potential awkwardness and can pivot to something more interesting, like my date’s opinions on every single Martin Scorsese movie.
The last two paths are when things get interesting and when I can vividly picture my brother, wherever he may be these days, grinning devilishly at me as I struggle to navigate through the conversation.
Option 3* I say I have an older brother. The other party asks a follow-up question: oh what does he do? And I respond casually but truthfully, often accompanied by a little laugh in the hope of keeping the conversation light: he died, but it's okay! Their face goes white — naturally mortified — and I get to console them and try to resuscitate the mood after the nuclear bomb I just dropped. Thanks a lot, Ezra. You dying has cost me this prospective acquaintanceship at work.
Option 4* I say I have an older brother. The other party asks a follow-up question: oh what does he do? At that very exact moment, I have decided to create an elaborate lie to avoid saying that he’s dead, including where he went to college, what career he fell into, and how he’s doing these days. I remember one instance of having this conversation with my high school chemistry teacher one afternoon following a lab. God bless her, she probably still thinks he’s a graduate of the University of Arkansas, now in a fulfilling career somewhere in, um, music…This is really disturbing, I’m aware, but I think we can all agree that the absurdity of this situation is inherently laughable.
Yes, Ezra has been gone for eleven years and some change, but that Scorpio older brother energy doesn’t vanish into thin air. I like to think that it shows up in these everyday conversations, or when my earbuds get caught on the door handle. The popcorn bucket debacle of our youth wasn’t enough. I *am* still a little sister after all.
I choose to believe I will get better at answering with the truth. That I have a brother — not had — and he was an individualistic, authentic, and fervent Scorpio that can only be described as a force. (Made even more apparent when picking out his headstone, a tall black granite stone with rock-pitched sides. It sticks out like a magnificent sore thumb in the cemetery and I know he would have liked it that way.) He was unlike anyone who has ever walked this earth and ever will. The right people will listen and smile, because they can sense that I am not sad but rather grateful to have known someone like him for half of my life. I choose to believe I’ll bring up his love of skateboarding and music-making and having spirited debates about existential topics at inappropriate times. He always questioned what happened to us after we died. And I choose to believe that I’ll continue to share memories of the days that now seem clouded by time, where he would poke and prod at me as a form of entertainment. Scorpios have a strange way of showing love, I’ve found. I hated it then, but laugh about it now. To be f*cked with is to be loved.
