Brother, you began to leave me early,
chose to offer yourself to the ground
beneath horses and trains, refused
to focus on my face, this world
a water too murky to cleanly navigate

You leave me every day in small ways,
and I imagine your organs must be eroding,
your skin the only shoreline I want to visit,
and time a limit refused again and again

And I am bursting, my fist a hot planet,
my pelvis a meadow, and I will be the bell,
a war ending, our hearts some elaborate
pulley system, a line long enough
to stretch across countries

I am still hostage to your absence,
filling a bucket, even the most familiar
street a wilderness I don’t recognize,
a waterline I keep expecting will change