There was a day in July when the wind stopped blowing and the sun lost its heat. I forgot what food tasted like. If someone were to have placed their hand over the concave of my chest, there would have been no heartbeat, or perhaps too much of one. That day in July happened to be the last day in July — two years ago if time remembers how to stand. That was the day an Amtrak took the place of my eldest brother.
Brother by bond, or brother by blood? Unfortunately, it is the second of the two that keeps me up at night. I have spent the last two years wiping my eyes with the tatters of a relationship I never had. It is the guilt that tucks me in at night, and the messages left un-responded to that elevate my head as I sleep. While the two clear memories of him I have, hold my right hand, I am left with the other to scour through the few photographs that prove us family — family by the same father and separation of our father from his mother. It was then written in the half blood that he does not reach out to me.
He smeared it some time five years ago when I entered the sixth grade. Curiosity (and Facebook) held me captive as I stayed in contact with him against the request of my family. I heard his voice for the first time since we were younger through an audio message. I held onto this over the years that followed almost as tightly as we held onto failed plans to see one another. I held this plan in the palm of my hand until the day he died. I held onto it as I ignored his messages, as I deleted his number, as I consoled myself with "when you're 18, you can make your own decisions, and you can see him then." When I am 18 and no longer bound to the "best wishes" of my family.
The best wishes that wished for good reason, but wishes that can't grant me the years I lost. Wishes that can't remove the LSD from his system on the 31st of July, 2014, and wishes that I can't wipe off of the railroad. Wishes that have turned to ashes, and ashes that have morphed into the piece, "Divine Demise," below.
“I hope you’re doing well,” you echo as I sink into my bed
staring at the ceiling, with a bullet laced through my head.
They know that you died,
but they don’t know you’re not coming back to forgive me
just please forgive my heart for beating.
There’s a little bit of irony in living just to die.
Did you see the Phoenix fall straight from the sky?
Straight from the sky.
I saw the bones, I saw him breathe
I felt the ash, he’s pronounced deceased.
Can I be given the strength to close my eyes to these hallucinations?
Can I pull the weight of seeing his face, again?
I heard him calling out to me
I felt the bones, I didn’t scream.
He wouldn’t open his eyes
I told him to open his eyes
but he was dead to me.
I wouldn’t my eyes
he told me to open my eyes
and now he’s haunting me.
The Raven seems to look at me with that gleam in his eyes.
He says, “I won over Annabel Lee, now what’s your price?”
The crow stands there with his head down
he opens his mouth to speak but makes no sound.
I look up, you have your head down
You open your mouth to speak but make no sound.
You reach down, you take and you take
I’m screaming “Pick me! Pick me!” for my own sake.
You said you would never forsake thee
but that’s exactly what you’ve done
on the day you took the Phoenix to the house of the rising sun.
