To My Stepbrother
We've ignored half of ourselves too long
especially since most of ourselves is gone.
I often wondered how you felt as a child
to be the brother of another mother's child.
They never wanted us to get too close
out of fear that we might want to share
what we gained and what we lost;
Who are these people I often thought
who separate and stay apart
yet themselves I felt they hate the most?
Mothers and fathers should never let
their lack of love hold them back
from loving less than their strap exacts.
For the days about which I can only whisper,
I wonder how well you knew our father.
Did he abide his love to you with a belt?
Did you too feel what I have felt?
Did he hold Norma like he held me
excited after a Sunday beating?
When you returned from Vietnam,
They should have done more than they had done.
Made room for you next to me,
Showed you how to college fund,
Let you in on the conversation,
read the baseball scores from the morning paper,
and listened to your war reflections.
My mother did some horrible things
to you and me and sister three.
Her weight was her lack of knowledge;
by this lens she reared her children
to read and write but never shift from us
the cargo of her ignorance.
I wondered why we were so excluded
from family when we lived so close.
They knew something all so well known;
they kept it closed and never opened.
Why Dad that day turned his back
and let you walk the road alone
to the railroad station three miles downtown.
I was too young to put up a fight;
to shout, "Hey! That's your son.
Like me to him an obligation."
I was afraid of their constant fighting.
I could never predict what they'd do;
it was a real horror show.
One surprise and then another.
Maybe you leaving was your blessing
You got out while I was staying.
Vietnam was a nasty war for you and for me;
there was no peace at home, no detente
there were two kinds of war I fought
one for mother; one for father
for both of them and my survival.
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