For My Brother, on his 30th Birthday

Your knees were always scabby, band-aids falling off, your skin sunburned or grayed-dry, scratched from raspberry or blackberry brambles. You were the first, the only, to get stitches, break an arm, break teeth.

You lost things; winter coats, a tent in a concert parking lot, half an apartment full of furniture put out by your landlord with the trash.

Your college books were plastered with yellow used stickers and warped with seawater from driving your open Jeep into the water on the Rhode Island beach.

You passed out too close to campfires, woke up damp in the early grey light, fumbling for the pack of cigarettes you’d crushed in your pocket. You ditched finals and drove to Boston with a girl who made the Jeep stink with cheap perfume, you bought her a rose at a service station, then gave it, frozen to wilting, to our mother when she came to spring the car from the impound lot.

You ran across six lanes of traffic to the Arc de Triomphe instead of using the underground tunnel. You did backflips at parties when you were too drunk to stand. The wheel of your fifty-dollar car fell off on the way home from the prom.

You are in danger every minute of every day. But you’ve made it this far.

***

Note: This isn't done -- I can't seem to make it come out right. But it is my brother's birthday, and my thoughts have been with him today, so I wanted to at least post what I had.