Remember those city nights we spent
inhaling the marijuana and halal truck tinted air that fills the space
between the skyscrapers?

Glowing storefronts illuminated
both the skies with their stars glistening quietly under coats of dust
and the streets, dense under ***** and ***** spilled by boys
who yell obscenities to girls
who hang their heads low,
ashamed to be happy to have their push up bras appreciated.

It was the summer we read Catcher in the Rye religiously.
We were overflowing with privilege and hating privilege.
Oh god, how we thought we hated privilege back then.

In June we graduated from middle school,
and you found out your father was cheating on the woman
he cheated on your mother with.
In July you kissed a boy for the first time,
even let him feel you up a little.
I couldn't help getting uneasy,
even though you said it was nothing.

Most nights we couldn’t contain ourselves, shouting ideas
fast as the taxi cabs who'd nearly run our still-growing bodies to the ground,
always in a hurry to get home to their own sleeping children.
We raged rebellion against the red lights.
There was no time to wait around for things as unimportant
as people who weren't us.

In August, I took a klonopin pill from my mom’s drawer
because I couldn’t stop the dread beneath my skull.
It made me sleepy.

We were so filled with poems and wine copped at art galleries
where we’d feigned intellectuality,
that we'd see a *** on a subway train
and call him a vagabond.

Back then we thought we knew how life worked
like the palms of each others hands.
By September, albeit, our fingers were calloused
from the time we climbed a playground's wire fence,
twisted the caps off beer bottles,
and swung from the Monkey Bars.

If I become blind tomorrow,
I'll know every detail of your face--
Your tired eyes, dimples,
And your imperfectly perfect smile.
I'll still "see" you inconspicuously stealing
Affectionate glances my way.
But, just as before,
I won't need my eyes to find
Your slightly pink lips
Awaiting mine.

He’s an angel, like me, like his other siblings.
He’s a brother, little brother.
He’s blood, my blood.
He is the youngest,
the weakest, and
the lowest of the combined four.

His flights are lower to Earth,
farther from Heaven.
closer to Hell,
Humans adore him,
his parents spoil him;
Satan sways him.

He turns his back on his worshipers,
backstabs them,
and leaves them to die.
Humans fear they have done something wrong,
they showers him in gifts
they plea for their lives.

I cry as he watches them burn.
I reach out to them,
I am ignored.
More offerings.
More gifts.
More pleas.

I plea,
I kneel,
I kiss their feet, but
our parents are lost in my brother’s spell,
my brother’s trick,
my brother’s façade.

I go to his worshipers,
I warn them of his treachery, and
I am branded as a demon for turning on my blood,
I’m gagged and
I’m silenced,
I’m forced to watch.

His wings are tainted black,
his skin is pulled tight around the bones and from
his joints, spikes emerged.
Small streams of blood fall from his hands
It falls to his people.
It’s treated like rains as they dance in it.

He commands his parents and
He influences his humans.
He is whispered to by Satan.
He flies farther from Heaven,
He grazes the ground of Earth,
He flies in the skies of Hell.

I’m raising an army,
a small rebellion of lost angels and
a band of rebellious humans.
We will take down this demon.
This fallen angel,
This brother.

I will be banished or destroyed.
I will leave with an open mind, a higher flight,
I will know they are safe from him.
My siblings do not abandon me
My humans rally behind me, but
My parents will try to suppress me.

The three of us will be his doom,
his Apocalypse,
his inevitable downfall.
Just as he shows no mercy;
no mercy for his humans,
no mercy shall be given to him.

He is my blood
He is my little brother,
He is my family.
But he is also my greatest enemy  
my wisest foe and
my demon.

I lie in bed at night,
And my hand rests in the dip between
My ribcage and my hip.

And if my fingers were larger,
And longer,
It could be your hand there.

In the morning, I crawl out of bed
And I fancy I'm your lioness,
Hair ruffled, stretching for the sun,
All gold, all lonely, while you play with others of my kind.

"Thank you for saying Happy Birthday to Shimone"
my mother said and I kind of said oh, no problem
and we went on from there to argue since that is what
we do and she will never know who I am
and I assume she meant Happy Birthday on Facebook because I
certainly don't keep track of her friend's birthdays,
especially not her friends who live in Haifa and remind
me of my X

Upset, I ran off to the pool, hoping for endorphins
after some laps  I rested at one end
and realized in a kind of slow, creeping way,
kind of like fog rolling in over the cliffs at Muir beach,
Not menacing, even beautiful, but a little cold, that
I never wrote anything to Shimone, not even on Facebook
No, I've been too self absorbed to write to my parents Israeli friends who used to
have me and my X over for Shabbat meals where I used to insist
on walking up the stairs since the elevator was small and hot and scared me
but he always wanted to ride in it
and one day we went over there was a sign on the apartments next door
that a woman had died in a terrorist attack the other day--
When a suicide bomber, afraid of the security guards at the nearby
mall, ran into an Arab restaurant conveniently located at a gas station
where all the best restaurants are,
and blew himself and everyone inside up
CNN international came for a day to report and then left the next
like a rude house guest who comes for your best food
and then dissapears, never to be heard from again

With my X, my mother always got cards she loved because he
knew just how to pick them and he'd send them without even telling me
sometimes faking my signature or
I just had to sign and he'd do the rest, in between crank calls to them at all hours,
taking advantage of the time zone.  At once tormenting and caring for them
as he did for me

And now is he a ghost in my account?  
A ghost, a fog, a memory, something ephemeral, not real