Open letter to my brother

Well now baby you are 20

Neon true and lonely

Aching like the OPEN sign of a convenience store you drive past too fast on your way to the "future"

Every car I’ve been in is different,

is a little life I share

with someone I could have loved

Mom said that

She should write poems but doesn't

nobody will hear of her again

but she texts us 

every morning: Up early Have a great day Looks like it’s gonna be sunny Go

Everybody has somebody everybody lost somebody

everybody loves. Despite knowledge, despite lies, everything we continue to lose

life happens and we find reasons. 

April is a green light and the world says Go.

Taylor Swift is red, Joni’s pain blue

Of course blue in life is one thing, blue in a poem another

Nevertheless I think I get what Chris Martin meant in that one Coldplay song: Yellow is loving you. Nothing simple, nothing simpler. Wanting

to share myself, to be that generous light like olive oil smeared over everything, every forehead, all of you

The shine of a sedan takes precedence in the sun

Your daddy’s legs, I think, could take you anywhere

I think of his face as lines I have learned to love across

and you kind of have to learn

you kind of have the dad you have

like how home is defined not by presence but by absence

by being the place where you go when you have nowhere else to go

People say New Jersey is fugly and it is

it is the lie in your stomach every Friday night 

wanting so bad to be from the city and the city so big not wanting you back

God you wanna be a New Yorker

ride the midnight bus to Midtown

you're poor. You are stubbly. And suburban. That’s you. That’s how you live and will live every day of your life. The trick is to love

your ugliness, to hold your life like a face in soft hands, to look at it and never look away

it doesn’t matter if you’re smart

it matters if you get why people used to worship the sun

it’s ok to love stars for their distance

though i prefer them for their accessibility

here’s the room with everyone in it

nobody will hear of us again

it’s ok

if you look up and suddenly it’s evening

and you've made nothing of the whole day, your life

your warm sweet slow fast smile is what's made 

by darkness

around the appearance 

of light

3 June 2024