For My Brother
For My Brother
Kara Vollman
We were drifting feathers
you and I, like the ones that overtook your room when our pillows collided in an explosion that replaced our laughter with an abrupt, shock-charged stillness.
The wind took notice and drew itself up
to hold those feathers fast as we realized what we had done and seized the opportunity to spin through them like clumsy tornadoes even as trouble barreled down the hall toward us - we were too stuck in the moment to care.
Then
came October with its rain and the smell of bugs and earth on our hands,
weeds nestled snugly in our barbaric hair.
Two misshapen grass angels.
Two boisterous scarecrows riding out the Fall.
And
the smell of Christmas - all pine and spice and chocolate and you in the early morning winded from running down the hallway unable to keep the words from leaping forth,
“Santa came! Santa is here!”
as your eyes sparkled like two fresh stars.
You and I
played hide-and-seek in the tall yellow field
with wheat so high it tickled our faces while the stinging cold turned our breath into small clouds.
The wind carried them off so we could chase them.
Later, we pretended to smoke.
We were always flying away
like I did that day when I was forced to confess, as I do now,
That I stole your skateboard
to feel
the rhythm of its wheels on the squares of sidewalk.
My scraped-up shins rested on its sandpaper surface as my hands made contact with the warm concrete.
It catapulted me forward
and I turned my head toward home
not wanting you to know
how much I longed to ride it as far as it would take me.
The wind
rode with me and urged me on even as it bit at my cheeks and eyes and blurred the world around me.
We did feel it for a little while, didn’t we? That wind?
We laughed as it blew our hair back when we rode our dented, mud-spattered bikes around the cul-de-sac and shouted, “Again!”
“Sissy”
“Boo”
All mischief and bruises and scrapes.
All feathers and pine and grass.
Two toothy-grinned eddies that swirled and laughed as we smashed into everything.
Do you remember the day
that we balanced and teetered our way across the smooth slippery rocks that peeked out of the creek?
Just when our focus was tuned entirely to the art of maintaining our balance while the water lapped over our bare feet,
our favorite storm-blue crawdad bucket, which we had drawn sticks to hold (we loved it so), fell into the water and was washed away.
We told mom we didn’t know who lost it
but you knew I had been carrying it.
Of course you knew, you always let me carry it
even when I drew the short stick.
But you said it was you
bearing the consequences for us both.
I felt so sad about it that I cried
and your tears joined mine as we mourned its loss. They joined again
when dad left
And I pressed my forehead to the cold glass of the window pane and splayed my fingers against its smooth surface as he walked down the driveway with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder that housed the rolled up socks we had soberly watched him pack.
I refused to leave the window in case he realized he had forgotten something, someone, a little doll with crooked blonde pigtails. You coaxed me away with the promise that I could play with your electric train set and push the whistle as much as I wanted.
Later, when you left
I pressed my head against the pane again, this time teeming with teenage awkwardness and hair that had dulled to brown.
I stole your cd collection to spite you and keep a piece of you with me.
But you came back too
riding in on the wind with a son who giggled when spaghetti-o’s would glide down his throat.
His voice was like the tinkling of little fairy bells
and his eyes were just like yours on Christmas morning.
How strange it was to hear him call you “daddy.”
But you brought pain as well. It rode in on your back and you could not shake it and
I thought my heart would burst
the day you curled into a ball and let the wind blow past you. And we grew angry, that wind and I, and we railed at you, we struck and howled and did our worst, but you remained still. Unmoved.
And I
was left alone to wonder -
when did you surrender?
Who was there in that moment when hope left you
and the stars in your eyes winked out?
They must have
wept
to see you spin and fall into those unreachable crevices where despair took hold and made you invisible
unraveling in a sloppy series of circles
a downward spiral.
as you
held fast to the deceit with a white-knuckled grip that was so strong I couldn’t pry your fingers open, though I tried. I hope you know I did. And I watched in anguish as it
ever so slowly
leeched the pain of life, the beauty of life
and replaced the Truth with an alluring hoax
a dull, sweet apathy
that changed the shades of your life to sepias that
faded. Faded.
So that I had to look hard to see you
always
hoping that if I could reach you
if I could crawl down deep to where you were
under all the layers of browns and grays
I would grab you and hold you up to the wind
and it would blow away the deception. It would carry off the horror of ‘unloveable’.
Remember
now, those inner reaches of your soul
where I have traveled to meet you
with hope that I could point you to the place
where He has always been everywhere all at once, our Wind,
waiting until your ears were tuned and you could hear the whispers that have been present all along.
My words gathering with His
you are loved.
You are beloved.
Kara Vollman
Poet & Presbytera
Kara is a writer, mother, student, and Orthodox Christian Presbytera living in The Greater Seattle area. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and is an avid reader and writer whose first love will forever be poetry. The majority of her works are themed around God’s revelation to humanity that He is Love. This is her first publication.
Photograph by Allec Gomes