When My Brother Visits We Play Hide and Seek
with Santiago’s VCR. The black ribbon of Como Agua
Para Chocolate still treadmilling inside. If the new kid
is working the pawnshop, we’ll have enough to split
Pioneer Chicken, fryer grease baptizing our knuckles.
Next week we’ll lift a fistful of tío’s dirt weed—his rocking
chair cure for foggy eyes. Then, mom’s grocery bag
stash of laundromat quarters. Gravity stretched it thin
enough to see the tidy stacks of guillotined fathers.
Us, less scared of La Jura, more scared of her—
only one we knew could square up and make even
God flinch. My brother and me practiced hiding
so much, we eventually lost each other.
Him paddling down any river that’d end
at the tributary below a tourniquet. I learned
you can lose yourself in someone else’s losing.
It took a dozen years of feeling
around in the dark for me to find a family
photo with everyone in frame. When I saw it
my eyes fogged too. In my periphery
I saw my mom, firing pearls from a slingshot.
One by one. She’s got a target in mind
but won’t say who. I see them pass through
the sky like a needle through denim.
I’m still waiting for them to land.
"When My Brother Visits We Play Hide and Week" originally appeared in The Rumpus.
