I found him on the floor
Looked like a puddle of chocolate sauce
I turned my brother over and…
That’s not chocolate sauce
His shirt was all red
I could not tell
From where he had bled
All I knew was
“My brother is dead.”
Now some years later, I’m grown
I have family and kids of my own
But there are more than just shirts and ties in my closet…
Hanging on a hook, next to my lucky belt,
Is his skeleton
Since that day, I have had it
In my closet
In my car on the way to work
Even in the shower while I scrub myself down
His corpse rests in a cemetery hundreds of miles away with a
very nice headstone.
And yet his skeleton is something I cannot be far enough
away from
I did not kill him
But I knew who did
My brother’s dead body was the result of him finding our
father touching our baby sister
My brother drew his prized switchblade and cut
Our father grabbed it…and thrust the blade to my brother’s
gut
And now, because I saw it all and said nothing…
My brother’s skeleton in my closet serves as a gentle, daily
reminder of my silence
R.I.P.
