Following the Brush, with One Name I Don’t Say
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| origin unknown |
Following the Brush, with One Name I Don’t Say
The last two chairs at the table
face each other like rival hypotheses.
We sit in neither.
Dust conducts the meeting with admirable neutrality.
My sibling prefers the physics of denial:
a closed system where no energy is lost
because nothing is admitted.
I bring conservation laws to dinner; he brings a lid.
Fact: memory is reconstructive. Each recall edits the file.
We have become unreliable narrators of the same afternoon,
co-authors who refuse to share a bibliography.
I inventory the dead—mother, father, elder brother,
the cousins who used to laugh like loose change.
Absence scales poorly; it makes our disagreement look large enough to live in.
He says, It didn’t happen like that. I say, It happened enough.
Between those two measurements sits a gulf with excellent acoustics.
Life always allows digression:
the hinge on the old door still squeals. I oil it.
Mechanisms, when tended, accept correction.
Blood, less so.
Humor, carefully: we are experts in non-apologies,
fluent in the passive voice.
Mistakes were made, by weather, by furniture,
by the general atmosphere of being alive.
I draft a letter I will not send.
It is precise as a lab protocol and just as likely to be contaminated by feeling.
Age advances like a quiet auditor. It underlines the columns:
time remaining, words unspent,
the cost of being right amortized over a shrinking horizon.
He keeps the story airtight; I keep it ventilated.
One of us avoids drafts, the other avoids suffocation.
Neither of us calls it love, though something stubborn breathes.
If reconciliation is a bridge,
ours is all blueprint and no steel.
Still, I carry bolts in my pocket,
ridiculous with readiness.
Last note: I practice saying his name without flinching.
It behaves like a small instrument—
temperamental, necessary—
waiting for a hand that will not pretend it was never dropped.
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My first crack at a Zuihitsu, a form I just learned of from those layered, introspective types at the DVerse Poets Pub.
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I can't speak to the form, Christopher, even though I'm hosting 😉, but I like this poem very much. So many good lines and imagery
ReplyDelete"If reconciliation is a bridge,
ours is all blueprint and no steel.
Still, I carry bolts in my pocket,
ridiculous with readiness."
This really conveys the situation of these two siblings.
(I thought from the title it might be about someone else.)
Nice one, Christopher
ReplyDeleteThanks for dropping by my blog
Much love
Beautiful and introspective Chris. The layered contradiction in this stanza is amazing: He keeps the story airtight; I keep it ventilated.
ReplyDeleteOne of us avoids drafts, the other avoids suffocation.
Neither of us calls it love, though something stubborn breathes.
If reconciliation is a bridge,
ours is all blueprint and no steel.
Still, I carry bolts in my pocket,
ridiculous with readiness.
You convey the situation so well in ‘the last two chairs at the table face each other like rival hypotheses’, Chris, as does ‘we have become unreliable narrators of the same afternoon, co-authors who refuse to share a bibliography’ – a familiar situation. I like the line ‘he keeps the story airtight; I keep it ventilated’.
ReplyDeleteChris, you valiantly captured the tense atmosphere, if not the form :)
ReplyDeleteyour poem is lilke unfolding a napkin and placing it on your lap.... loved the interaction between the two siblings... i had a rather large family and sitting at the end of the table left handed) would often unfold into a passive confrontation with no words spoken... i only wish i had the strength to project a stronger message as you have reflected between the two...
ReplyDeleteFull of wonderful phrases, acute observation, and deep understanding of human (and sibling) nature.
ReplyDelete