The Hanged One
I woke up today and said clearly, 3 times,
My brother doesn’t like me,
My brother doesn’t like me,
My brother doesn’t like me.
Forget the rationalization and the adjustments and the never ending
feeling of the feelings.
He wrote me a mean, unfair thing, a wholly complicated thing
steeped in patterns and legacies and energies that circle
And entwine us.
For years, months, days, hours, minutes to the second I have
been placing my tongue in that nerve space, a tiny jolt of
electric pain.
I can fix this.
I can fix this.
I can fix this.
When I woke up today, a warm spot left by the cat,
my daughter moving around in the floor above me, my eyes
still a little gritty and sandy from the emotional expanse of it all,
I whispered those words,
he doesn’t like me.
I felt them out, looked at one side and then the other.
And damn don’t you know, it didn’t hurt as much.
I thought going through a sea of revelations, rewriting justice and
skimming the rich fat off the top to make some sort of
painstaking meaning would arrive me at the shores of
utter enlightenment.
I assure it, it has not.
My brother doesn’t like me.
It is akin, in this moment, to a dull vibration.
It’s not as charged but it still stings every time.
It’s not about me,
it rings dull and desolate.
Family ties and chords have yanked and yonked and reverberated
me to explore.
To let go of some of it and to embrace some others.
It’s been a story I never find the ending to, which annoys me,
surprises me in childlike wonder, and, because I seek and I seek
and I seek,
piquing my curiosity every time.
I can’t help but turn the pages and taste the flavors and feel the feelings,
its always been in my bones and marrow and blood.
My brother doesn’t like me. That’s ok, a little voice says.
It’s ok.
Why I say, why is it ok.
Sure doesn’t feel ok
Even though it doesn’t sting as much these mornings.
Because he loves you.
Because he loves you.
And I’ll see him when I can see him.