Love and Affection
We would sit on his lap
My brother and I
Who’s boy are you?
Your’s
Who’s boy am I?
Mine
It was a contract
One we all needed
He was far from perfect
But he was what we had
We loved him
And he loved us back
Then
He died
Used to blame myself
For my brothers pain
I used to blame myself
For just about anything
You might wonder
How you get wired for that
Well I know
Yes I do
I know
It was the first school day
After the funeral
Bowl of cereal
Onto what comes next
Fourteen years old
Here it comes
Fast like a predator
Hand full of hair
Turned me right around
Somethings you wish were fiction
Turn out to be fact
Now!
Your gonna know who the boss is!
Swat!
I see my blood splash across the China cabinet
Kind of a violent Jackson Pollack
Swat!
This kind of thing really does happen in slow motion
Time really is relative
Swat!
I think my braces are poking through my bottom lip
Yep!
They are. Clean through
The orthodontist is going to be really pissed
We are not done yet!
If he were there this would not have happened
But he was not
Swat! Swat! Swat! Swat! Swat!
An hour later
In homeroom
The remnants of my morning
Plastered on my face
The teacher took me
Straight down to the principles office
Where they protected me
Because that is what adults do
In times like these
No, fuck that didn’t happen
That’s bullshit
He did though tell that fourteen year old boy
That he deserved it
A statement that was hard to dismiss
Now back to it
Swat!
You little mother fucker
Pet names
Swat! Swat! Swat! Swat!
Right eye blurry
I would spend years telling myself
It was a back hand
That’s all
My reasoning
To make it better
Swat!
By the time I got to First hour
My right eye
Closed up from the swelling
My bottom teeth are still crooked
They are my trophy of survival
Swat!
I gotta tell you
He was getting some leverage
Still it was just a back hand
Not a full fledged punch
SWAT!!!
Time stands still in moments such as this
I don’t know why
As I took those seventeen back hands
I imagined I was under water
Listening to boats
While children were at play
I still sometimes wonder if
I could have held my breath longer
Maybe even all day
This is how you get re wired
This is how you become something
Something different
As I imagined being under that water
I knew I would survive
I also knew
There was no going back
Speaking of boats and water
That God Damn ship had sailed
