Things we forget to die from

For a guy raised in a tropical savanna climate, struggling with 15C feels almost embarrassing. What does that say about me? Have I gone soft? Or maybe I have just gotten too used to this Palo Alto air.

I crack open the window, expecting the cold to wake me up fully or maybe numb something restless inside. The breeze slips in, unbothered, it does not care what kind of day I have had.

I have not been sleeping much these days, some nights I just lie there, mind sprinting through things I never said. On others, I crash hard, only to wake up gasping from dreams where he is still alive.

My brother.
In the dreams, he is always younger than when he died. Sometimes we are kids again, riding bicycles. Other times he is standing in the kitchen, humming, as if dying was just something he forgot to do.

I do not talk about him much. People in this city move fast, new jobs, startups. Who has time to grieve someone they never met?

But when that cold air flows in and touches the back of my neck, it reminds me, of simpler times. Maybe that is what this chill really does, it brings back the parts of me I pretend I have outgrown.

Some days I wonder if this grief has shaped me more than I admit.  Not in loud, obvious ways, but like tree rings you only notice if you cut deep. A part of me still laughs the same, still makes great coffee, still flirts with the idea of healing but beneath that, there are layers, some tender, some hardened.

Is pain damage? Something to fix or erase? What if it is just depth, or a new dimension to the same? What if the sleepless nights, the strange silences are not signs of weakness but signs that you loved with your whole self?

Maybe it means you are still carrying the weight because it mattered.

So no, I am not broken. Just layered. And some of those layers still dream of a boy on a bicycle, racing down a summer street with his brother, alive in the ways that memory insists on keeping him.