til the end

We make fun of the dead, mostly, that’s what we do. I can’t believe it’s snowing again. “Fuck the living.” I tell him. He still listens to me. “Do you wish you would have shaved yet?” I ask him again lighting my cigarette. I ask him every day.

He’s sitting huddled, I guess. Army jacket pulled tight, his beard the rascal he wished he was. He was never in the army but now, now who knows. The snow lands on everything but us.

“Do you think Kasha will come?” He asks me. I smoke my cigarette. At least I have that. “Where the fuck are we gonna get coffee at this hour?” He thinks I am starting in. His forehead is wrinkled like he is thinking strongly about pain. I tell him to stand up and he won’t be so cold, but he will be. I think about that. I wish I could make him warm again.

“Open your eyes for fucks sake. Hey, Michael! Open your eyes.” But it takes more than that, it always does. I have given into the fact that he fights things still, just because he’s my brother. He’s what, twenty five years older than I am. Twenty five years. I still see this kid, skipping through the sprinkler, wonderful, pure, full of the truth of everything, and he loves me, and I can protect him, I can go first, I can give him that.

I’ll always have this cigarette. God if I could pass that back, lordy god. I see that little boy now, in tiny blue speedos, barefoot, curled like a been in the snow, shivvering, all somewhere inside his chest. He grew up alone with siblings. I wonder if he sees me the same way, some greater or lesser self inside my chest or beside me thwarted or redemed. I remember his light, it would be like him to remember my darkness. I suppose I help him do it.

He sees the car pull up, feels it. “It’s not mom.” He tells me. Were both standing. First car I’ve seen. I know it’s not her either. He’s crying. His face, his beautiful face, dried and wrinkled like he died in the sun, his hair like his fathers at the end, flowing and grey. My god he was beautiful as a child and more so as a man. His arms are still folded around himself, never warming him. He tore all the patches off the jacket, that was cool. I won’t look at her, not yet, I can’t.

“She has kids.” He tells me, barely, weeping, he is sitting now, I think, at least I hear him fall. I hate god for hearing their voices, for seeing them, their laughter, god it hurts so much to be gone like this.
I can’t make out what their saying, and then, our names, she says them and it is so perfect.

“I’m sorry I haven’t come in a while.” and she is crying now too. I can’t tell who is with her, I think it is a man. “This is Amelia Elliott Goodreaux and this,” she says, halting, choking like we are on all this grief we bear in love, in limitless love, “this is Anne Kay Goodreaux. Say hello girls.” And they do, and it is so beautiful, nieces.

There is something so true about pain, and about loving. I would not wander going back, I would stay near those two champions of my heart. They’ve gone. “I know you didn’t have to stay.” He tells me. We’re trying to kick the snow. We think of them a lot. We fear for them, all of them. I put my arm around him. “We’ll be here.” I tell him,