I’ve started seeing my brother’s body everywhere.
I’ve started seeing my brother’s body
everywhere. It looks about eighteen.
Cargo shorts, deeply tan from a summer
spent outdoors. Our mother’s green eyes,
our father’s straight nose.
He was the beauty of the family, he was
eight years my senior. Glorious, infallible,
unknowable. The young god who could do
anything. Now he lies at my feet.
Keep a six-foot distance, I keep reading, and
my mind conjures his 6’1” frame to be my ruler,
drawing the radius of my protection.
He fell, but I do not see him fallen.
Lonely,
leached of color,
sighing and drinking in our parents’
garage.
He fell, but the corpse is in front of me.
The golden god of the past lies between us.
.
Olivia Woollett is a Boston-based writer from Spring, Texas. She holds a BA in Writing, Literature and Publishing from Emerson College. Her work has appeared in Stork and Concrete Literary Magazine.
Stone Poetry Quarterly 