It's been at least 6 years since I called you on anything

Now its a telephone on your hospital bed

The most we spoke; the least we said

20 minutes of fighting with the television for awkward conversation

A third of the minutes diluted with silence

When I dont have a response to a sentence

It's been 2 weeks since you had your rib broken

Have to replace your phone cause some kids had stole it

In that call, I revert back to being a kid

and selfishly clawing for your attention

Knowing I lost that when I was 12 and you were in prison

Or maybe 9 when the shit had so many dimensions

I only had you to blame for becoming the defendant

You were my uninvited baggage on the doorstep

Crocodile tears in my carriage

2 hours west to be by your hospital bed

You were 3 weeks out of the cold

The nurse hears more than they want to know

And you remind me of when a friend from 7 years ago

She had a dream you were dead and unknown

Washing up on the river bank

Now your hospital is 2 miles away

From the bridge, you told me you wanted to jump

Until someone stopped traffic to shut you up

It's a premonition

 A sick sentiment

Obsessing over inanimate objects

A year and a half his crutch has been in my shed

And I'm moving now but can't get passed

This idea that it should come with everything of him that is left

Like the sum of his ashes unspilled on the table

From our ritual filling of silver mementos

That now leaves my throat feeling hollow

This inanimate object like a noose around my neck

A year and a half later our mother asks if I have bipolar depression

And she references our blood in the past tense

It takes little for me now to control my emotion

Except for when I think of him

A year and a half later and I pretend I've curbed the anxiety attacks

From when I had a dream he was in the driver's seat

Taking us off the cliff

Long before I ever lived on the ridge

Or woke up late at 8 am

and didn't respond to his text message

passed the hotel off the exit again

And the apartments where I could have done everything different

In honesty, for a while, I resented the death of him

Simply because it was something for myself I had imagined

you're still holding grudges against a ghost

A brother with blood too thin to share a toast

Now courage can bond us

Or become the host

For resentment despite now that

You are who you chose

for most of that November, my teeth were stained red

Lost the high of life and got drunk instead

But I should have scared myself

with any tendency to become a lush

I am already a submarine made up of rust

We carry our burdens like a badge of honor

Its the weight of addiction and a homeless father

The past makes excuses for decisions on the altar

Our perceptions are distorted on where we falter

When I was 7, I waged a war against my body

And every ceiling fan that chose to taunt me

So every middle-class home was haunting

I was 9, crying on the stand uncoached

and still was found a liar by most

So I know we could pour our offenses

Into someone else's definition

But what justice isn't

Robs us of goodwill and intention

6

Life is regurgitated in distorted sentences

It takes 5 years to learn comprehension

You were reading me wrong as I'm heaving anxieties

In my crusade against the softer parts of me

And you know my father abandoned me

So I hyperventilate in my sleep

And you use it against me when I'm weak

It's embarrassing to trip over nothing

You are a helium get well balloon

I get lightheaded and then confused

With all the hot air I am filled with

I make a conscious decision

To mute myself instead of the television