My mother told me I live
like a beast and like a beast
I will die. So goes the omen:
my family tree rooted in animal
language: my bird-talk, my moth-cloths
stained with wings and petrichor.
I’m still slow
in old ways.
Close the blinds: my head
spins like a blade.
My head
is a grief
prison. Its one light,
an orb: my brother
buzzing, my dead brother full of teeth
and ache. Such is the gesture
of vision: so far into the dark
the past careens the dream until the dream
brands itself
as fate. My brother:
a blued body
to begin with: never
breathing, yet fell from my mother
all the same. Like a ghost, he paws
my doors of vision.
Like a beast, he grieves.