Brother
by Aidan Forster
after Rumi
All you need is a milk crate. All you need is a screen
that plays the same video over and over again,
the one where the tornado evicts the woman from her body,
says Congratulations, my small perfumed heart,
you are mine now. And the day the wind boxed you
into city hall, the same day the couples stormed the town
in search of a diamond ring hidden by Jared’s
or the Galleria. All you need is that sort of myth.
All you need is to pretend the river is our mother,
to unlock your body from the water until you feel
like something loves you. If you sleep anywhere
let it be the palms of my hands in California,
the day I held them below an ice cream cone
to catch its spillage. Like all sweet things
you belong there. Brother, I am ill
because I want to give you everything:
the sand dollars I unhooked from the ocean
with my toes: furred into white, mouths open
in a bottle of bleach. The snake that slept
for an hour on my left foot and the way
I felt like boyhood was stuck
in a beautiful green box with no lock
but so many keys. The thousands of thimbles
our grandmother lines up in her kitchen
like small metal dresses that will be worn once.
And the sweet cold water and the jar that pours.
Brother, there is a language to this kind of living
that we learn the way people in a building
learn it is being demolished. Brother, I used to dream
about a forest where disease was a flower that opens
once a year for an hour. And last night, for the first time,
you did not press it to your lips or swallow its bright bloom.
Brother, I will let the stars do whatever they want to me.
All you need is a milk crate. All you need is a screen
that plays the same video over and over again,
the one where the tornado evicts the woman from her body,
says Congratulations, my small perfumed heart,
you are mine now. And the day the wind boxed you
into city hall, the same day the couples stormed the town
in search of a diamond ring hidden by Jared’s
or the Galleria. All you need is that sort of myth.
All you need is to pretend the river is our mother,
to unlock your body from the water until you feel
like something loves you. If you sleep anywhere
let it be the palms of my hands in California,
the day I held them below an ice cream cone
to catch its spillage. Like all sweet things
you belong there. Brother, I am ill
because I want to give you everything:
the sand dollars I unhooked from the ocean
with my toes: furred into white, mouths open
in a bottle of bleach. The snake that slept
for an hour on my left foot and the way
I felt like boyhood was stuck
in a beautiful green box with no lock
but so many keys. The thousands of thimbles
our grandmother lines up in her kitchen
like small metal dresses that will be worn once.
And the sweet cold water and the jar that pours.
Brother, there is a language to this kind of living
that we learn the way people in a building
learn it is being demolished. Brother, I used to dream
about a forest where disease was a flower that opens
once a year for an hour. And last night, for the first time,
you did not press it to your lips or swallow its bright bloom.
Brother, I will let the stars do whatever they want to me.
Aidan Forster is a junior in high school. He studies creative writing at the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities in Greenville, South Carolina. He is the 2016 winner of the Louise Louis / Emily F. Bourne Student Award from the Poetry Society of America, and his work has been recognized by the national YoungArts foundation, the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award, and the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. His work appears in or is forthcoming from The Adroit Journal, Assaracus, Indiana Review, and Verse, among others.