Work Text:
1. you
2. are an
3. experiment in finding
4. out about what it
5. means to be alive and
6. to hurt so badly that you
7. feel like you’ve already gone and died.
8. hurt is a verb and a noun and
9. an adjective. it is the very nexus of family.
10. hurt is your spinal cord taut as a bowstring. hurt
11. is the empty doorway and the full trunk. safe is knowing
12. that at least you are beside your brother. finger over trigger
13. all night. that is what it means to brother. verb, noun, adjective. promise.
14. psalm 23. you are looking for poppies in the field behind your father’s back.
15. dead gray wheat everywhere. dead gray pigeon in a cat’s mouth. your father is sowing,
16. and he won’t tell you what seed it is. just gives you a scythe. missing prom.
17. missing mom. missing life. learning silence. your brother begs a word. you turn on the tv. your
18. brother shoots up like a comet. gargantuan and precipitous. hurt is you knowing what axes do to trees.
19. terror turns to envy turns to anger. fight over nothing. everything. his hands know ink like yours know blood.
20. your spit runs red. known the weight of a gun so long it became you. you shoot your brother out.
21. hurt is the empty passenger and full trunk. safe is hoping he never sees your face again. safe is the nexus.
22. and so the wide road. and so birdflight. and so heavy, slugging barfight. and so the water runs clean down the drain,
23. away from you. sometimes when you fall you think about not getting up. belly ripe for gutting. it would be so easy. yet.
24. on days when the light sees too much of you, you drive into the woods until the stars come back, lay on the hood.
25. you cannot bring the dead back to life. you can only bring the living to death. can only store night behind your eyelids.
26. you drag him back. you’re not sure you’re sorry. green is sprouting in your father’s field. you die for him. his scythe now. brother; verb, noun.