Memories of my Brother

You didn't just think that to burn yourself out
To the hymns of a martyred
Clavicles was enough
You requested something more
Of your patella and your humerus
Because even when you boiled down your fat
Like it was for cooking pancakes in
You could not bring yourself
To fill your stomach with anything other than lies
And promises as empty as the cavern
of your mouth
And when your bones did not oblige
You began to screw your fingers tighter
Around each and every narrowing part of you
And it was harrowing to see the way
That your fingernails -
The only part of you still permitted to grow -
Tried to root out trenches along your vertebrae
From which you could battle your way
To fatal victory
And there were many casualties of trench warfare
But it was not barbed-wire and shelling
But fingernails that decimated me
Because I knew that every one of your phalages
Wanted to coil itself about
Your spinal chord
And pull, sn-

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