little brother.

I watched our mother try for years,
unable to keep you long enough to grow
but there you were, built from bottom up,
somehow nineteen years of struggle could not fill the holes of light peak
I stitch up my voice, through the static I tell you to stay,
to find some other way to will yourself a different kind of person,
I hear the knot in your nervous baby belly and the receiver is silent
your childlike feet are stretched onto yellow foot prints,
you have become a man uniformed,
straight lines and perfected pleats,
strangers will tell you that you are brave
because tiny fingers are now the hand of a man resting on the cold metal,
the truth is it could kill us all,
break us up into tiny pieces of heart and bone,
it could take us hostage, caged
I lock myself inside of this hotel room with the cry from deep in my gut,
my rattling chest, my breathlessness
with a gasp, a "holy fuck,"
this is the beginning of waiting,
inhaling thick South Carolina air that smells of sweat,
the salt fills my lungs, the sting of having no other choice,
I wipe the mosquitos from your face, adjust your pockets,
and send you on your way.