Brother

i knew you not. a couple of years of love's labour lost before i came along. a couple more years to learn of joy and pain. of sorrow that secretes its whiffs long after the hurt has passed. a wakening once the sniffles and snot subsided with the precariousness of early childhood's end. learnt of that fateful night you took the rainbow bus. you were missed. not by me.


i have often felt a deep unrest. detached from what i should have been if genes have a pull. detached and unsure of why i am how i am. but i have never been able to shake off this restless yearning. deep within. welling. screaming. sobbing. gagging. i am not often me. incomplete.


i took your place. 500 miles in a little red coat. my first big adventure. the lady told me years later - cheeks pinched with the wind eager with the fare thee wells.


many autumns for this december's child. each grey season made me long more for the desired twin. a certitude that grew with the vacuum within. i probed. turned out to be a fancy whim.


under the moon glow spread eagled on cold concrete me and blood brother spoke of you. snooping through his room i had found a poem for you. he misses you. no. the memory of you. the ten days he was betrayed of a brother for life. he is the only one who has held my pain and i his. through that moment we both reached out and touched the pale fading gloom. we knew it. i am you. was meant to be. have been. will be. sure wish could have been the three of us that night.


your grave a crumbling grey
your soul a ruddy ray
brimming through this oyster's pearl