Blood brother

It’s you brother
Whom I remember  
Those sparkling blue-sky eyes  
Blinking softly at me
Wrinkled smile
I can barely see
 
I lost you then lost myself  
In an agitated and endless sorrow
A dead weight of sad, salty confusion  
Blind sided by the circumstances of your own demise
Unbeknownst, you drank from the poison chalice
Then followed
A drowsy suffocating death
Not of your choosing  
 
Your feathered blonde lashes, kid
Resting below the clouds that hide your lids
Asleep despite the chaos of our world
 
At 22 you were just a child
It wasn’t meant to be your time  
You played a single hand of roulette.  
And lost.  
That wretched game  
It took your life, from mine
 
For twenty long years  
I circled the globe  
Numerous times
Thinking occasionally of you
Not always  
 
Your spirit only wakes
When I need strength
I conjure you up
In the shadows of my mind
 
You emerge, concrete and scintillating
Via thunder storm  
Steely eyes  
Sand coloured blonde stubble
Pale skin
You gently tumbleweed past  
As I try to pull the barb from my skin  
I glance across
To see if mid tumble, you are watching.  
You are.
 
Only you would understand  
The delicate and complex injury
That I now tend
Open wounds from flesh and blood  
The ones who gave us both life
They loved hard and sometimes they hurt
Mother and father dearest  
Im sure you remember  
 
We’re cut from the same cloth
We share the genes and bone structure
Our kindred spirits are eternally matched
It’s only you who knows from whence we came  
And surely we can understand each other’s pain
 
I wish you were here
To see what I can
To feel what feeds me
To roam where i roam
To hurt where I hurt
It’s only you who would know
 
Life is beautiful
But without you brother
The barb twists deeply