a loss is forever mine to keep

A Loss is Forever Mine to Keep My older brother was a healthy looking fellow always ready to joke and play, when he lay dead on a slab in the morgue he looked like a third rate actor too tanned to be convincing acting dead. And to think that he had killed himself, an overdose of sleeping pills. When they lowered the coffin into frozen Nordic soil, that had begun to thaw now that spring whispered sweetly, I waited for him to knock on the lid and ask to be let out, when this didn’t happen, I wondered if there had been a awful mistake that he was in a hospital, somewhere, in deep coma. Mother was bitter when her son died she had no one to drink with anymore and in her cups she said she hadn’t minded if it was me cause I was always a stranger; true even in a one room flat I managed to create my own space in a corner, reading, observing and admiring brother’s easy smile. With brother gone I left home, joined the merchant navy to see the world and discovered that a bar or a whore looks the same whether in Shanghai or New York. Then mother died and I was too far away to attend her funereal, but I still wait for my brother to come out of coma at some mysterious hospital deep in the valley of lost dreams. Written October 2nd, 2001 © on Oct 02 2001 09:18 AM PST   18 • 0 • 10