I booked a flight to America
Wishing to start a new life.
You found out I was leaving.
You were mad as if it’s a crime.
You called me and asked
If we could see each other for the last time.
You gave me a letter that broke my heart
Explaining why we fell apart
Telling me you never stopped
Telling me you though I gave up
But the one thing I wont forget
Is when you said
“I will never, ever forget you. You’re one of the reasons why Im happy and because... you mean a lot to me.”
I wanted to talk to you and sort this out
But it was too late
Because I have a flight before midnight.
Looking back to those days
Still makes me sad.
Its been a year and I still think about you.

i'll let you be recluse & writer
you can describe how strange horrible
it feels to suddenly realize that one of us will someday die
the other left standing in the dark middle of a railroad
silhouette illuminated by a single streetlamp
mouth open with a granite rock wobbling in hand

i pray that it's me who falls first
after our parents so they won't have to bury a child
& you my only brother can remove my name from
the lyrics of every song you wrote for me

i can't give you the words to write
but find them & add them to your own memories
of me on a spring afternoon standing in shorts
on a softball field or rooftop with
hands on my knees & two wisps of hair in my face like
moths orbiting shafts of remembered yellow light

stick out your tongue & i'll teach you to whistle
without your fingers if you teach me to scowl & squirm
**** with my armpit & spit melon seeds at lowing cows
we'll dangle from plebian treebranches upside down together
& when i fall off the monkey bars you laugh
but when you're on your head in a heap of kinetic energy
i pick you up & brush ***** tear spirals off your chin

i'll drift away first into sleepland with a smile plastered on my
strawberry cheeks squirming legs & my body
coiled tight like a bedspring with laughter stomach cramps
from the stories & jokes you whisper on the floor in the half-lit gloom

i will be your darling sister forever lying to mom
about the time you burned a hole in the linoleum
& you will throw rocks at the back of my head
from a young persimmon tree like a noisy bird gargling bug juice
pretending to skip them across a pristine lake in the
blue grayness of the churchyard before dawn

Help me to know
that this hunger
is not personal.

This form that
holds my soul
is more delicate
these days,
but the mind
is also clearer.

Help me to be
patient, help
me to trust
what comes.