Brother

My brother is lying dead in the snow!

Kim bangs on the side doors, a lollipop wedged in the folds of her thumb; she doesn’t seem particularly rushed, but her urgency is present. I don’t know what I’m doing with myself, I’m overturning frozen stepping stones expecting to find warm worms. The entire bluff is ribs of ice, and the sound of the lake has been suffocated by the whistling of the wind over the frozen slabs. It doesn’t feel like summer, but on the side porch it is, and Kim’s urgency has disappeared completely. My hair is caught in my mouth, slipping down my throat, and I can’t find him in the snow. I’m terrified to look harder, terrified to step in as I fear my foot will sink straight through - or worse yet, onto the side of his face. How could I be so sure he was even there? The snow falls as though it’s been falling this whole time; it must’ve been, if I can’t find him anymore. 

Kim’s gone and put out her lollipop like a lit cigarette, full and pulsing still. She leans back into a rocking chair, watching over the bluff with an empty mind. She won’t express it, so I can’t know what she thinks of all this; she just sits, and bleeds nothing. 

He’s over here!

I thought I brought the cold with me, being born into a screaming snowstorm, the winters got warmer as I got older, but that only further solidified the belief. I wondered if this was my fault!

He’s over here!

I feel like I hear him, and I know can’t - he chooses not to speak to me, he chooses not to raise his voice. He watches me, he has a headful of thoughts. I miss him, and I only just met him.

I’m over here!

Kim’s red lollirette is burning a hole straight through the snow, exposing a layer of ice protecting curled green grass. I see the tip of a finger, and then the rest, dewy with melted ice. A freckle that’s an imprint of my own, the opposite hand. It’s fainter, a little off-center. The stain of a tarnished ring rests below, and I trail the veins down to the narrow wrist. And then it stops. 

The ice continues.

I’m over here!

Kim’s got it tucked back into her thumb, she licks her palm and pushes her hair back behind her ear, listening. Her interest is piqued. She turns off around the side of the house, back toward the winding trail to the main road we once saw a bobcat cross. I stay. 

I wait for the clouds to move past, and the sun to melt the ice further. The hand didn’t continue, only the faintest bit of a forearm. 

God, I miss you. My chest burns when I remember I can’t be there again, and my throat tightens the way it does when I am angry - I’m not angry. I wouldn’t ever touch your hands ten years ago, I was selfish with my own. I look at them, see them aging, I push the skin below my thumb against the nail and it should hurt but there’s a callus now. I don’t think you’d have calluses. I tried to help you learn to hold a pencil, and I can’t remember how it felt. I gave up on you, I knocked your front tooth out, maybe both of them. You don’t remember it, but you know how maliciously I told you when you could. I taunted you for lack of baptism, and I evaded the church from fear of my first confession. I wonder if you believe in God, or if you ever were made to. My thumb callus is ripping, it still doesn’t hurt. I pull at the one on the side of my ring finger, desperate to expose the raw skin, I can’t keep writing apologies that I’m too pussy to send. 

I’m over here, you’re off the road with a bobcat between us. I wish I had welcomed you into my home enough for you to want to write back sometime, call out over the preserve to tell me you love me the way I want to do for you without shame flushing your cheeks. 

I think you’ll be alright, I don’t worry like anyone else for you. I needed to leave our home, and you do, too. Two more snowfalls, maybe less with the heat, and the distance will become far enough between that we’ll have no other choice but to call out, arrange to shake hands or push up the vertical kitchen lock. 

At least we’re on the same side of the glass.

Wassily Kandinsky, “Winter Landscape,” 1909, oil on cardboard, 75.5 x 97.5 cm, The State Hermitage Museum, St.Petersburg, Russia