A Letter to my Brother Darrin

Dear Darrin: This year, Winter might be a bit quiet
and I wish you could be here. I bet you do too.
You are on another side of the world again, lost
in a war only the history books will judge. Years
after the blood has seeped into the earth and decades
past the clearing of rubble school kids will stress
over dates, places and names but now I feel my world
skip two beats every time I watch network news.

So much has changed between wars, Darrin. You and I
have gained and shed pounds, friends and lovers, watched
our hair turn into that family mish-mash of gray and silver
as we moved from one downtown apartment to another,
and saw the world shudder as four small planes did their best
four horsemen impersonation one September morning as we
casually sipped a third cup of coffee. I bled fear that day.

I wonder what you have seen, and if death really does look
the same, from all alone in some bombed-out street
thousands of miles away, to an antiseptic hospice bed
with family and friends all around to catch that final breath.
I think about the years we shared a bedroom, and the battles
little bothers have with a bunk bed as a backdrop and now
I see that nothing we did back then could have prepared us
for these parallel lives and thrust-on roles we now play.

November has become a string of cold rainy days
with a morning fog that crawls over Omaha
as if Nature doesn’t know what to do while she waits
for the pounding snows and the life-taking wind chills.
My dog lives for her afternoon walks, and the air
has a slight taste of smoke from scattered fireplaces
finally getting some use. I wish you could see this.

Almost three times a week, I am slapped out of bed shaking
with night sweats and the chest-tightening scare that this could be
the sleep I don’t wake up from, and then I wonder what you
are afraid of right now, and the shame tears up and out of me.
I still have days where thirty-five pills and fourteen different meds
are too much, so my body screams “NO MORE,” and I never leave
the bathroom. I know you think that kind of thing is funny.

I hope that you are safe right now, and I pray you get home soon.
I know Mom misses you as these holidays creep closer to today,
as if some magic spell needs all the children gathered at the tree
to make the new year safe and complete. I wonder what she thinks
of this world, and how it has changed her sons as they each had
their battles from school year fist fights and backyard bullies,
to cutting edge drugs and two foreign wars. We all miss you.
Be careful. Love, Brian.