My brother lost his body
bit by bit—a foot, a finger, a shin.
The doctors strapped it to a bed,
and the mouth screamed on its behalf:
Help! Help! With the eyes,
my brother spied me, standing
in the body of someone
who looked like his sister;
and the mouth said
Health! Health! but my
body had no way of sharing.
Stubborn, he set his body
to starving: it’s a hard going.
One day I tricked it
into eating cake
by saying we were at a party.
The body likes to do what
everyone else is doing.
When he was done with it,
I could tell: every limb
he had left sighed, sank
and rose again softly, like smoke.
Like smoke: when he was done,
my brother had his body
set aflame. My body, always
dutiful, arranged it.
In the white room, roses, burning.
Then it was over. I took him home.
