My mother shook her head sadly
As she mourned my brother
The pain
And the anger
With which he's set himself aflame
A bonfire continuing
Since he came to first grade
He was sent to the principal
For a peeing contest with friends
Though the teacher'd let me be
When I'd cheated and lied on tests
I was the good child
The first child
The straight A
He was the ugly middle
The one who couldn't be saved
The more he misbehaved
The more they wrote him off
The more they wrote him off
The more he wrote off school
They told him,
'Why can't you be more like your sister?'
'I remember her still'
The more they asked him
The more he hated me
My mother tells me that
He used to adore me
I loved my teachers
I respected them greatly
I couldn't understand him
My mom coaxed him and fought with him
While saying it was fate
I'd always be the good one
He'd never get straight
The lazy one, the black sheep
He couldn't be helped
How more could she bother
A sad muscled whelp
In our distance, in time
We grew to hate one another
Every morning in high school
We would have to disturb the other
To have our father
Take us to the bus together
Every morning in high school
Became a battleground
'Why can't you wake up?'
'Why can't you leave me alone?'
'Please don't make me late again'
'Shut the fck up you btch'
He shot from his den
I left for college
He didn't get in
I came back for Christmas
The flame relit then
'You'll never become a musician
If you can't show up on time'
He told me never to speak
Hand across my windpipe
I left upstairs sobbing
Wanting punishment for his crime
When I mentioned police
My mom turned on a dime
'You've done this to each other'
What could I have done, Mother?
I was only always the good one
He was always the Devil
He's hurt each of us
He hates each of us, though me in special
I've seen him assault
Each of us but our father
His life is a trap
He trudges through wearily
I'm the only one
Who will go to therapy
My mom, shaking her head
Burdened so heavily
Though she has her part
In our play of tragedy
I ask her if she would
Seek mental help too
She says, 'Why?
I'm fine dear
There's nothing to do
I've got my friends
To talk about this sort of thing to'
Equating them to a doctor
Defending her innocence
Leaving me be
The sacrifice again
The focus of his hate
The good little lamb
Go save the world
Leave us
At home in bedlam.

Oh it's just that I'm ex-Mormon
Well I like to be in control
Ah, no thank you really
I'm not judging you
I'm judging me
I just don't drink
(or smoke or swallow or shoot)
because I see
My brother,
My uncles,
My grandfather,
The pain it's caused them and their families
My family
Has a history with addiction
I feel in my genes this predisposition
So I'll keep going to bars for
The setting which has been
For millenia in human civilization
I'll keep learning the compounds
Brewing my own mead
But I won't consume
The things that could consume me

I'm turning you
In my mind
In my writing
Into a figure of longing
A trope of star-crossed lover
Losing sight of who you are

You aren't unique
In the way that I love you
I'm not unique
In the way that you do

It is still bitter
To leave one another
We want different lives
We want each other

We don't dare to change
The other or me
I support your dream
That leaves me lonely

We will find lovers
At our destination
But though I'll find him
You set me in motion

I don't find
Your line of friend and lover
Until you trip
My feet with its wire

My face and hopes crushed on the ground again

He is taking care of me,
making me dinner or picking it up,
buying me groceries,
massaging me with ice cubes.

He comes into the room with a mask,
to ask me if he can hang out,
and we cuddle in bed watching Better Call Saul,
a mask over each of us.

I’m realizing I can’t kiss him with a clear conscience
for seven more days.
Somehow he keeps testing negative.
I'm glad he's not sick, but I'm annoyed too that we can't be together

This is part of why I love him
This is part of why I know he loves me

Get on the trolley!
Oo at the statues!
Let's be tourists
For this city
Again