Legos & Mulberries

Almost every day, I drive by the spot my brother bled out onto in 1989

It’s a patch of sidewalk on the corner of a fire station

in the small town I ignorantly chose to settle in

Sometimes I tear up and mourn a boy I didn’t know

Sometimes I don’t look

My mom doesn’t visit me here because she probably believes

that I’m repeating the mistakes that she made into her 30s

Sometimes she’d reface her trauma and visit me

when I lived on W. 9th Street,

a block away from the hospital where my brother was life-flighted to;

I think it was in August of that year

So probably

Late summer heat

Maybe less traffic

Maybe less noise pollution

Mulberries pressed onto the ground

Orb-like imprints here and there.

His death made the New York TImes that year,

as one that was supposed to influence state gun laws

on trigger locks and lock boxes and at-fault laws.

His age was misprinted as 12. He was only ten years old.

Scotty.

Again, sometimes I mourn, sometimes I drive past.

My mom’s trauma was passed down, directly or indirectly, as she was already a mother to my siblings and pregestational to both my sister and me,

and I feel for her.

I try to be the best mother I can be and I stand firmly for gun restrictions, also.

.

When I lived in Washington State, there was another mom at a playground whose kids were playing with Nerf guns and she asked if my daughter & I felt safe and comfortable in a shared space with toy guns, and I said “No,” but appreciated her asking.

My mom didn’t visit me there, though, either, because she’s afraid of flying.

.

I think of my brother, and I think of Tamir Rice who was only 12 and who only was playing, and I think of gun violence, and I think of profiling, and of 3D-printed guns, and I think of lego-themed gun cases, and I think of the accessibility of them, and I think of a child’s lack of access to breath and so many other future opportunities, and I think of these things together and the answers seem so obvious, and yet I’m left speechless as a writer.

.

I hear that my brother loved anything science-y

and that one time he mixed bleach and ammonia

and that he had a bright smile and he wore glasses.