The Brothers

 

The gap between them was five years wide.

So closeness had varied over time—some-

times homicidally hot, then cooling down,

but never fully burning off.

 

Growing up, we joked about the deadly way

they fought: who was Cain, and who was Abel.

Which is to say: who murdered whom . . .

 

I heard about the way they sat knee to knee

that weekend at the treatment center—

the other addicts and their kin circled round,

listening and watching. Someone told me

how hard my two boys wept, and how

the snot poured down their faces, and how

entranced the others were by what they said,

and how beautifully they said it.

 

I raised them in a house of books,

and taught them to love the written word.

Still, I declined to read the transcribed text

of what transpired at that session, even though

it’s been my habit—until now—to follow

with my finger down the page, line by line,

and word by word, meting out the nuance.

Not this time. For god’s sake, please don’t

tell me what they said, or who they named,

or which one took responsibility for what.

 

Addiction is a family disease. It infects

each member and distorts their stories. It lives

to breech the boundaries of given texts,

and to change old narratives and destroy

plots you thought were set in stone.

In jealousy and anger, Cain slew Abel

in the charter myth. In real life, I suspect

that Abel also slew his brother.