my brother wrote a story about a guy who goes to retrieve his older brother’s body after said brother drowns while living in korea, and the story opened with the younger brother smoking in bed with a girl with the same name as the one i was trying to…i’d been gone so long my best friend had written me off as dead, but even more upsetting the story was better than anything i could write so instead of sending the feedback he asked for i told him
“koreans don’t have middle names”
“but on facebook hers is…”
“they don’t have middle names”
that shut down the conversation not just for the day, or the week, but for years. it wasn’t until i started swapping stories with other writers in colorado that i understood killing off siblings in fiction is just something writers do, wasn’t until i reread the story that i found the part i should have been paying attention to all along—a couple of kids wading through a wooded creek, turning stones over in the moonlight, trying to catch salamanders
i read your story wrong
sought fault in my own blood
i cut my right arm off
can we turn back the clock?
threw your pearls to the swine
poured water in your wine
how could i be so blind?
all this time
we’ve been silent over
something i can’t
and that’s when
sunburst through mountain trees
pine scent on ocean breeze
what else more could we need?
11:17 