Premature, they died at birth. Twin brothers and I too am their brother.
They were born 5 years before me. Jared Scott and Trevor Alexander. I was born with my umbilical cord wrapped around my neck, and they were so small they could fit in the palm of your hand.
They were kept in glass boxes: incubators humanizing glass bodies shattering aliens in fabricated wombs. Clear tubes ran from each nostril to machines with numerical equations that simulate abnormal infant’s breathing pattern. Their hearts were UFO’s, unidentifiable, black hole brain matter with lungs like space vacuums.
“They came too soon.” I was told
Possibly cremated, I can’t remember what my parents said.
When I was younger, I thought babies couldn’t die.
*
Upon my birth, my parents gave me the twin’s middle names: as if some fusion of sunlight and stardust could manifest into a third being, still stuck on earth with the cord around his neck.
Cortex in cortex. Conjoined astronauts sharing intersections of skin, fluids, and bone. We are of flesh and blood, yet I did not know them. They are more than childern, but intersteller beings, cellestials and heavenly bodies.
Twin constellations, Gemini, comparable to Castor and Pollux themselves. Their fates were left up to the stars, but they were not spaceships, they were meteorites burning out in unearthly fires. Without a fighting chance, their flames were stifled.
“Mayday.mayday……….. Mothership.is………………………crashing…..… ……………Mother……board.short-circuiting……………..……… Firing 3rd……….. ……thruster…… Firing………….. 5th.thruster……… 10 minutes ..till…...…….…... ………………………………………..impact……………………………………….……
recharging ……….......flux.capacitors……………………..Oxygen..Nitrogen…..…..
……………..­Burning……………..… up in atmosphere……………..….5.mintues.till ..impact…………………Suffocation…........Fuel.exhaustion…………1 minute…….
………….45…...seconds………….Depletion..............30.second­s…………............................................................­.................................................................­................
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………­……………………………… Planetary. Collision……… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………­………………………………………15.seconds…………………………………………………………... ………………………… Planetary. Collision……………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………………………­……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….………………...………T­he sun is so bright …………….…………………………………………………………..……………………………………………………………………………………………­……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………­………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………”

Baby you don’t have to cook or clean
just sing for me
and I will love you

At the corner of 12th & Main
I am reminded of
the night you couldn’t
stand like a newborn
deer with pelvis
resting on broken glass
bottles tightly curled
around your lips
resembling
a girl
in a cocktail dress
the one whose
neck you kissed your mouth
a slot machine
BAR BAR BAR
hacking up
cigarette butts and what’s left
of your dignity

At the corner of 12th & Main
there is the scent
of liquor stained
into the pavement
your skin cells made
impressions
on the pavement
body rag dolled up
like a cadaver
on parade
and I your Grand Marshall…
I’m sorry
for scuffing your boots

At the corner of 12th & Main
your psyche collided
with concrete
sunken
inward to slish and
slosh on a whiskey
tango tidal wave or
was it tequila foxtrot
see now I’m
drunk too

On the corner of 12th & Main
An attempt is made
to fashion
a gurney
out of what’s left of
wasted anatomy
two
fractured carcasses I am
one of them your brother
holding your feet
marching
like funk tossed in a
blender, frapped
Emily is there
She offers you
her couch and me
a bottle of *****
and *******

In Emily’s apartment
I took you
to the bathroom
your fragile
husk
shivering on the
chipped linoleum
dehydration
and a smaller frame
will do that to you
promptly I got you
some water and a blanket
to no avail
so I held you
in my awkward
limbs
till your bones
were silent

While in the shower
I watched the water bead on my skin,
forming puddles in the creases of my
hands and I think about existence
and what it means to be human

To express how drifting into
the ocean feels like a kaleidoscope and
day and night don’t mean anything

Why we don’t kiss
strangers more often, the kind where their tongues
slip past our lips and heads and hearts burst with
feelings of real love, genuine and true

There are times when I wish the world would end
and during our last seconds, everyone would become
transparent and sincere, the firing of a single neuron
would stretch a mile till the tension
snaps, traversing synapses,
neurotransmitters, endorphins, and
loving thy neighbor

While in the shower
I see tangents in liquid universes
that form tidal waves in the canyons
of my brain and I think about you

To express how falling in
love with you feels like a bomb cloud
and you and I are one in the same

Why we kiss
each other so often, the kind where my heart
slips past your ribcage and fear and anger collapse
under our love, fruitful and wild

There are times when I wish the world would never end
and during our lifetime, we would be
euphoric and free, the corner of your eye
could tell a thousand stories of
our first kiss, jubilance,
and loving you