I was raised by the brother of all brothers
The best friend unlike any other
The football playing
Barbie doll decapitating
Hurt my sister
Watch your back before I send you to the hospital
Type a brother

The, let’s go camping
Have Tate load sis’s arms
Wood so high she can’t see the dirt path beneath her
And watch as the new scar forms
Scratches of a cougar
Bloody and cut up
Type a brother

The, why not sterilize with beer, the only antiseptic handy
And listen to her pain squeal away through an uncontrollable laughter
“Wow I wish you screamed instead”
Type a brother

Remember the nighttime street football games
Midnight Nerf gun wars
Hours of Monster in the Alley
Not stopping ‘til the ball of flames fades away the darkness
All these ideas came from one
Type a brother

The out there, wild, stay up ‘til 6 a.m. with batteries up his nose
Let him impersonate Lil Wayne
By licking a lollipop
His sister’s skirt on his head
Calling the strings dreadlocks
Rapping “Just call me tamp cuz I got blood on me er’day… from boxing”
Type a brother

The, goodtime seeking
Parents gone, let’s sneak a bunch a’ friends over
Be smart and leave at 5 a.m. so we won’t get caught
Type a brother

A, “Get to know my friends on a personal level
Since the ones who know you love you more than ever”
Why not share the love?
Type a brother

Let’s wrestle with a drunken mother
Kings Cup all the way around
That’s not skunk you smell at the neighbors’
Send a random picture
“Right now I look like this”
Type a brother

The C.O.D. teaching
Get his sister addicted
Forget the Xbox at Gilmore’s
Kind of sibling
Being the protector
While simultaneously keeping his distance
He’s my type a brother

The sit you down, have a serious talk
Type a brother
The time she felt trapped
Trapped inside a Blackness


Clouded and enclosed
Having this faint… feeling
Like there’s something calling her
Calling after her to go back
To go back into that dark daunting place
She’d go back
Back to drinking
Back to smoking
Back to carving hurting and hating
Back to puking ‘til her eyes reddened with tears
Droplets trickling down her cheek
A sharp sensation of fire, eating at her throat
He listened
He once heard
He connected the dots
“Nana I’m worried about you”
Type a brother

Watching his watery eyed baby sister read her poem
As she held in
Choked up
Spat out
Her deepest secrets
Sitting in the dark with nothing but the light of the laptop dancing across her face
Her legs lay limp, dangling out the 2nd story window
Her gaze entranced by the street light, imagining before her eyes what she had just revealed
Every feeling she felt she scrawled on the pages of this worn torn journal
But when she read to her friends, they stood and did nothing
Not a damn thing
Not him, he’s not that type of brother

He’s the only one who will listen
Give guidance
Actual advice
“You’re just a booty call”
The brother who wants her to be with one
“You’re in love with him aren’t you?”
Deny
Deny
Deny
The type a brother that knows

The sister who has seen the player of the past
Cry, less than a handful of times
Laying on her bed
Slowly falling silent
Hands hiding his face
Changing him, hurting him, making him crumble
How can a sister forgive?
The accepting her brother’s wishes
Type of sister

He’s the brother
The brother that took her out of her dark place
Who made her numb and gloomy eyes lift once again
Who had her stop, right where it all began
“I’m here no matter what”
Type a brother

The senior leaving for a college miles away
Who taught his sister how to swim
Helped her ride a bike
And now ends the phone with an
“I love you little sissy”
Type a brother

The sister who will freak out not seeing him in his room
Or the hallways at school
The type a sister that will miss the brother who isn’t there anymore
If it wasn’t for him then

She wouldn’t be here now
I was raised by a brother
A Mentor
A Best Friend