Brother, Please Live

Sister, I feel you living,

in the way your amber eyes unwind my flesh, 

bearing witness to my soul.  

In the way you cry when you’re alone 

and struggle to stand,

but always manage to rise. 

To you, I am a lighthouse,

a sun that snuck into the night. 

Oblivious to my chipping, salt-bleached paint 

and rotting wood

and dimming glow, 

you see a way to escape the dark. 

After you leave the treacheries of the deep, 

returning to my side,

you watch golden filaments dance across the water. 

The sunset gilds your hair, 

longing stretches over your features,  

and I fear losing you, again, to the restlessness of the waves. 

Brother, I feel you dying.

My dwindling flame,

my misshapen candle dripping wax on the windowsill.

A slender sheet of glass stands, straight-backed, 

pathetic protection from the inferno that your birth stoked,  

from the forest fire lurking outside these walls 

destined to claim you. 

If we were made of holy water, 

I would have painted the earth in boundaries that the demon couldn’t cross.

Spending the infinite oceans wedged within my blood

and the last of the droplets clinging to my withering husk  

to buy time. 

A future for you is worth 

all that is left of me.

In the way I can count your ribs, 

and the ridges of your spine mold perfectly to my hand. 

In the way you vomit into the night, 

and limp along, 

trailing our mother like a second shadow, 

I know that you’re losing yourself. You look at me like nothing has changed. 

I look at you and I see his death, all over again. 

Sister, don’t leave me. 

Brother, please live. 

(Brother, please set your ashes aflame). 

Natalia Salinas

(she /her)