Husk

We brace ourselves on tan linoleum,
The mortuary hums with its usual busyness

My brother is gone

“Take as much time as you need,” he says
A ferryman, too familiar with death
I search his face for wisdom
Some hint on how to cross
I can’t breathe
Gravity roots me in place

My brother is dead

He throws the heavy wooden door
My eyes are slammed with blinding fluorescent light

The door yawns along its path
A curtain rolled open
Behind it, cold metal legs
A white plastic liner
Blanketing a figure I once knew
Now a melted wax figure

Jake Is Dead

Weak in knee and spine
I have no courage to go in
But something inside hoists me up
And drags me towards the abyss

I pause at the threshold

The ferry has already disembarked
I stumble into the white room—
A cavern of tile and blank walls

Time fractures and spills into the wound in my chest
My ears ring and my vision collapses

Jake Is dead

I wrestle my eyes to meet what I know is there—
The wreckage of my brother
Reduced to neatly stacked clumps

A bullet split his face,
Scattered his memories across a wall
This is the void that stares back

Jake is dead

A purple bruise blooms unevenly across his skin

Jake is
dead

His left eyelid half open
A brown pupil on a glass marble, peeks from underneath

jake is
dead

What do you see now, Jake?
Why don’t you breathe now?

Just breathe—brother
Please, just breathe

jake

is

dead