Brother of my soul,
you are the sweetest of us, the gentlest,
the strongest and the kindest.
I thank the fates that brought us together,
speaking secrets in the dark between sips of petrichor.
It pains me to write this for you.
We've never been one for words--
only actions--it is the force that drives our bones.
And when we can no longer mend with science, or time, or love
we close our eyes and open our arms to embrace inevitability,
and can feel nothing at all,
and everything all at once.
It is our nature.
It is Nature.
Today we breached the inevitability of life,
not lessened by foreknowledge.
It's a bitter syzygy, the truth that as the son reaches his zenith,
his senior must descend.
All I could do for you was hold on to the thin
invisible thread of anguish connecting across thousands of miles,
as you wept in your car, uttering the words across the salty deltas of your face,
words your father spoke to you about your wedding day, "I'll be there either way,"
and remember when I once cried similarly,
clinging to your voice on the other side of this country telling me to
"Breathe, Lydia, breathe."
You can't die.
Please don't die.
I'm not ready yet.
I will never be ready.
How many children have pleaded with parents
for the one thing that cannot be given?
And how many parents have said
to the child--"That won't be for a long while."
and then to the teen--"We all die one day."
and to the man--"That's not up to me?"
Oh, my brother,
I want to crawl through the phone lines
to you and hold you--but I can't.
I want to lie to you and tell you,
that it will all be okay--but I won't.
The only thing I can do
is to exist with you in silence
driving out into the night, in the twisting
dipping, heaving paths between the moss covered pines.
Hurtling through time, up the contours of our lives,
hoping the next turn holds anything but devastation--
none can slow time--
peering out through the glass as the
night engulfs us in sonder.
