Oh Brother...

I text my brother well past the hours of socially acceptable telecommunications; asking “You still awake brother”?  You see I have just experienced Sarah Kay’s poem “Brother”, and am inspired.  My brother too was “never meant to fill my shadow”.  I find myself inspired by the force that is my younger brother.  He is good and kind and will serve his fellow man with all that he is until the day he dies; and I want to be him when I grow up.  He was always thus.  Back when I was obsessed with playing soldier and acting out destruction, in our conservative, thoroughly American home he was a pacifist, and not afraid to say so…. Despite the merciless mocking and tormenting of his older sister.  He saw the value of life from the start, and I had to learn it the hard way.  So I tell my brother, my hero that I would dedicate the work to him were it my own, and he is flattered.  And I tell him that he should be, that I hold few in as high esteem as him, and he replies that he loves me too, and my insides warm as I bask in his ambient goodness.  He would probably be embarrassed by something so praising of him, that’s his way, and it makes him even more…..