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Craig Ryan
The stars are shining through my window—
five o’clock in the morning
when the sky’s purple luminescence stains
the blinds and makes you dream of beautiful houses
along the ocean’s arms
when I hear a moan
not a girlish moan
like your mother might make
after sipping some good chicken noddle soup
and complimenting your use of onions,
no,
more of dying moan
your father makes
when he sips black coffee
At five am after a long night shift
in a cheap strip club,
the moan
of death
and nails
hammers striking
vocal chords,
piano keys shattered
and shards flying sideways
and I raise my head off the pillow,
blink my eyes,
hear my brother vomit
up
five nights of a bender,
cheap vodka
into a brand new toilet bowl.
I hear his bowels
down into the core
of him.
I can tell by his moan that he’s on his hands and knees
Face pressed
to the lip
of the toilet,
sweat rolling
into his eyes.
I can tell that he’s naked
by his desperate pleas
to
just
die,
His body scrunched up
between the walls
like a used Kleenex.
I want to ask him if he’s all right
—the sky lifts its curtains and the moon shines
its final light. I hear my brother cry—
I hear his head
bounce
off the linoleum.
He holds himself,
his fingers
trace the stretch marks
which cross his body,
and when I help him up,
fit the crook of his arm around
my neck,
I whisper something to him
that I know he can’t hear.
I help him to bed,
wipe the drool from his mouth.
The night recedes like a black tongue
into the gold of a new day’s open jaws,
and for the first time in my life,
I kneel beside him, I hold his hands and at the
foot of his bed, I kneel and pray.