Already Gone
It's been a long time since I posted, and even longer since I shared any type of creative writing with you guys (I think like half a year?), but I recently completed a poem about my stepbrother, and I'd like to make it public as I have with most of my other poems/fics. I would promise to be back soon with an update about other life happenings, but all I can say is that between grief and the fact that my disability case is being reviewed (and thus could be abruptly taken away), I am pretty well off my game. So I may be back quickly or I may go another month. I have no idea. I will try to make it sooner rather than later though.
---
Hello again
It's so lovely to see your face,
to hear your voice.
To move & make space
for your forgotten smile;
to wrap myself like a cloak
around the sparse words shared between us,
tracing vowels & consonants with my mind,
as if doing so
could somehow tether you to the earth.
…To make you stay.
Once upon a never again,
you called our family home.
(Two little birds of prey were we)
You ruffled my feathers
as only a brother could --
my brother
in arms.
But then you left me in the trenches
to crouch, alone,
on blackened soil,
while plumes of fire rained down
from an endless sky.
You never did say goodbye,
never really even offered
a reason why.
Still, I kept a hopeful place for you
twenty steps down
in the dusty basement of yesterday,
tucked your ghost into a hidden corner
and turned away,
told it, this isn't over.
Your face eventually began to fade --
nothing more than a reflection in the water
broken by a stone,
concentric circles reaching
forever outward, just trying to hold on
to the impossible image
of how things could have been.
Make that should have been.
I tried to tell you, even so,
about the phantom pain in my heart--
the map of stitches
across my soul--
but you were already gone.
You had been from the beginning.
…Isn't that the truth?
Maybe our truth?
(Goodbye again)
I know I'm supposed to blame you,
name you
a coward, a deserter:
perpetrator of the most selfish
of sins.
But I know all too well
the siren song of a fiery end,
of razors & ropes,
four walls closing in.
I can still taste the
bitter ashes on my tongue;
I can feel
the icy numbness
stopping up my veins.
…I thought I'd be doing everyone a favor.
Did you?
Maybe
this was your mistaken gift to the world;
maybe you couldn't see
any other way out.
Maybe it doesn't really matter now
anyway, but then again,
maybe some wars
were never meant to be won.
---
Fin
---
Hello again
It's so lovely to see your face,
to hear your voice.
To move & make space
for your forgotten smile;
to wrap myself like a cloak
around the sparse words shared between us,
tracing vowels & consonants with my mind,
as if doing so
could somehow tether you to the earth.
…To make you stay.
Once upon a never again,
you called our family home.
(Two little birds of prey were we)
You ruffled my feathers
as only a brother could --
my brother
in arms.
But then you left me in the trenches
to crouch, alone,
on blackened soil,
while plumes of fire rained down
from an endless sky.
You never did say goodbye,
never really even offered
a reason why.
Still, I kept a hopeful place for you
twenty steps down
in the dusty basement of yesterday,
tucked your ghost into a hidden corner
and turned away,
told it, this isn't over.
Your face eventually began to fade --
nothing more than a reflection in the water
broken by a stone,
concentric circles reaching
forever outward, just trying to hold on
to the impossible image
of how things could have been.
Make that should have been.
I tried to tell you, even so,
about the phantom pain in my heart--
the map of stitches
across my soul--
but you were already gone.
You had been from the beginning.
…Isn't that the truth?
Maybe our truth?
(Goodbye again)
I know I'm supposed to blame you,
name you
a coward, a deserter:
perpetrator of the most selfish
of sins.
But I know all too well
the siren song of a fiery end,
of razors & ropes,
four walls closing in.
I can still taste the
bitter ashes on my tongue;
I can feel
the icy numbness
stopping up my veins.
…I thought I'd be doing everyone a favor.
Did you?
Maybe
this was your mistaken gift to the world;
maybe you couldn't see
any other way out.
Maybe it doesn't really matter now
anyway, but then again,
maybe some wars
were never meant to be won.
---
Fin