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.