Your Best Behavior

For the first time in 22 years, you recognize
your brother as a man. Boom. There he is:
standing in a puddle of blood in the kitchen.
His voice becomes a buzzard flying
circles above your neck. He has the lips
of an astronaut. The shoulders
you once sat upon now reveal a secret,

confessing their obscene beauty to you
in the hallway. There is no longer a sweetness
in praising the enormity of his hands.
You’re not sure how much more of him you can take.
Every glance across the dinner table, each
accidental brush of his leg against yours
drags you further from the young catastrophes
you once were; the shared bed in winters,
the magnified deaths of burning ants, the belt buckle
that kissed your backs, Easter morning
in the basement with a stolen bottle of gin.

It is the last night you ever spend in that house.
For the next eight years, its only signs of you
are birthday cards on the mantle and a wreath
of pinecones made in Sunday school.
When your mother dies of a terrible disease,
you send a modest arrangement of snapdragons
and baby’s breath.
All the men you sleep with become a quiet revenge
against the beautiful man you’ve been married to
since you were five. It is a polished infidelity,
an almost odorless betrayal.

That same year, you cut off your hair and quit your job.
Lose your apartment. Get addicted to coke.
Everything you need to live your soft, invisible life.
On your thirty-first birthday, you leave your car
on the side of the road and run into the empty dark.

Eventually, you find an ordinary town to die in.
Marry the first man who hits you, buy a dog
that shits the carpet, give birth
to four ungrateful boys.

When you finally die, it is the best day of your life.
The doctor makes the announcement and leaves
the room. You are lying in bed, surrounded
by your sons and their agreeable wives.

It is very charming, they think, how your grandchild,
a lonely little girl with messy hair,
lays her head upon your chest,
listening for a heart
that has not been home in years.

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I don't think anyone's written that particular problem quite that well. You go girl
jax