I speak as if my voice is a guidewire
sliding toward my brother’s heart,
opening each vessel’s glossy skin, lighting
the coal stove inside. Warmth might begin
rising upward, his cheeks coloring like twin flowers.
I narrate the roads we drive by memory:
The coastline north of the airport, I say,
the tunnel beneath the harbor, and the city’s summer
market, each storefront closed. If I could see
my mother, where she sits beside the driver,
I’d see how tears can look like sweat—
as though she’s been running
some long distance, her hair the wiry stems
of orchids in my father’s greenhouse.
When I was young, he lifted a caught sparrow
from the soil bed and set it in my hands.
It rolled to its side, clawless, injured
in the falling. Toss it up, my father said,
maybe it will fly. The truth is,
I bring my father to the poem only
suddenly, to amend the law of his absence,
and because my brother’s eyes are closed.