One and the other eleven

Bare foot round the back of a house

walls too tight for twelve

you were photographed behind your brother’s shoulders

held and mothered by your sister

now a grandmother.

Tales took shape there

of breaking bottles against concrete

making green glass shake into dust like sugar –

tales of little boys

vaulting high fences, propelled by the spring of fear

from angry dogs salivating.

The barking seemed enormous to you then,

these tales were ticklish to me when –

that defiant cow’s lick never sitting flat

tiny twist turn you gave up correcting

years before my brother and I

made for ungrateful babies with untidy hair

offering daily confirmation of all our kindred faces.

There is so much fallen dust

blanketing with your old brother’s last letters.

I picture you watching him drift towards the March mist.

Now he thickens the ground

surrounding my brother’s long left shoe,

the one you weren’t to notice turning

light and loose on the breath

of the nobody who knew.

Your brother, my brother

there

all too close for sight –

yours, the one who couldn’t last the Spring through,

curled up behind heavy doors,

left room for a small one to flourish into next April,

and he’d be mine, and his, and ours.

And you may never photosynthesise into your mother’s child

like the other eleven –

you were never fully exposed to her direct rays,

her softest feelers always searching,

just missing you in the shade.