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Adult - Ode to my Brother
I was 8 years old the first time I met the beast
“Don’t go downstairs until I return.”
My sister’s voice,
A pale echoe,
but still it bites into my nightmares.
*
Ode to my brother
The one who had the wolf inside him.
Ode to my brother,
Warrior prince with unquenchable hunger
*
Where has he gone?*
Lost with his dreams
that were once ripe like
the succulent peaches
dangling
in our grandfather’s orchard
In the place where our laughter
still hangs from a noose in the*
kingdom of our childhood.
Ode to my brother,
Whose tanned skin
once stretched across
mounds of hard muscle
Now unmask protruding bones
and*sickly streaks of red.
They mark his skin like broken train tracks
Leading to the chaos of his heart,
*
Ode to my brother
I saw him laying cloaked in shadow
*at the bottom of the stair case.
A silver needle winking at me
From the glow of a pale lamp
The beast lay frozen in a deep slumber
This, an Ode to my brother
I moved my feet like I was draped in heavy armour
Then pulled the wolf’s head onto my lap and
*coiled my fingers through his ebony coloured mane
White foam bubbled from his cracked lips like the*
white froth of sea water.
The prince was drowning in it.
Praying the breath from my whispers
Would breathe life into
the stiffness of his lungs.
*
Ode to my brother
The one whose spanish eyes were once brighter*
than the northern lights
Ode to my brother
The one who chased me*through blades of*grass prickling at our feet
Rain droplets spraying from my heels
Now collect like tears in the garden of our fears
Ode to my brother*
The one whose smile once shone like moonlight
The one lost somewhere in the twilight of his youth.
Ode to my brother
“Don’t go downstairs until I return.”
My sister’s voice,
A pale echoe, but still it bites into my nightmares.
*
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