Anything I speak, I know to speak a second time: My brother
is dying. My brother is dying. You are not my sister
tearing through an Italian restaurant, blistering
with what I have given her no choice but to know.
Nor are you my father, head sheathed in his own hands,
human obit for a home where children never start reaching for knives
to turn upon themselves. Thirty years ago, my parents met in this red
-checkered restaurant where mounted televisions tremble
with love stories birthed before them. Today, Harold plucks a banjo
that is no longer Maude over the cliff-fallen carcass of a hearse
that is no longer Maude. Today, my brother lies stretchered downtown
like a trampled scarab. His stomach petaled and sagging with excess
diazepam. My father pretends I can keep his secrets: I’ve tried
too hard. What other possible ending. You are pale and punched ripe
with holes, pastiche of my childhood walls, so I pack you
mute with plaster. I should tell you—last winter
I invited death piously inside of me. Brother, I confess:
when you stood at the top of the stairs and told me you wanted to die,
I felt the sting of theft.
