He Was My Brother

He will not be remembered by many

And by fewer still fondly.

When I pass from this world,

He may not be remembered at all.

They plastered him with labels they didn’t yet understand

Or even know how to treat

And left him rotting in the black sludge his ailing health had reduced his mind to.

He saw terror and temptation in the red dots on a television set,

Convinced that some unnamed,

Unholy evil,

That unendingly plagued him,

Could see him through the red, blinking eye of encroaching death.

I was fourteen when he died.

I have carried his death with me ever since.

I was going to tell him but I waited too long.

He was my brother

And we were more alike than I ever had a chance to tell him.

After his funeral,

I burned the letters I had written him.

I watched the smoke leap into the air

And looking through the flames,

I saw him;

Face black in death

And twisted by my own black sludge.

‘Hello brother,’ I sighed.

‘I see demons too.’