Picture my younger brother,
age nine, supine, sprawled
on the kitchen counter after
that aluminum baseball bat
cracked the top of his head,
while our mother, former ER nurse,
sutured the wound with black thread,
my sister and I pinning his arms
and legs down ******* the Formica
to keep him from writhing away.

I saw my brother yesterday,
now bigger and taller than me,
hair thinning faster than mine,
and upon catching sight of the
white crescent scar, remembered
my mother’s steady hand,
red with blood, stitching skin to skin,
sewing together two moments in time.