I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times by Taylor Byas

Author:Taylor Byas
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781593767426
Publisher: Catapult
Published: 2023-06-29T00:00:00+00:00

If I Could Love Life into Him

On the tip of a tongue one note following another is another path, another dawn where the pink sky is the bloodshot of struck, of sleepless, of sorry, of senseless, shush.

—CLAUDIA RANKINE, “In Memory of Trayvon Martin”

My own name cuts through

the night like ceiling fan blades, pulls

me from a dream. And again,

until my brother’s silhouette

fills my bedroom doorway like

a murderer’s. But he doesn’t yet have

the posture to kill, his preteen body

still prototyping danger, laying bone

and muscle like concrete.

He can’t sleep, so he roots

his mattress from its frame, drags

it across the carpeted hall into my room,

one long shhhhhh as the mattress

irons a path. On the floor beside me, his breathing

stutters as if he is restarting from

a nightmare. I tell him everything about

nothing, how tonight’s full moon

spits white against my car

in the driveway, how Chicago snow

will turn the emptied tree

branches to drooping mustaches

in a matter of weeks. His body gives

the tears away—all its shuddering—

so I slink down beside him,

become a second blanket. I am struck

that it has been over a decade

since I have held him, since he has cried

in my arms. He peels his wet face

from the front of my shirt,

tilts it upwards towards me to say

something, and I wish I could see his

eyes. I want to know if they are now pink

skies, if what has always been clear is now

the color of water that has washed

the hands of a killer.

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