we fell the tree

I found my brother folded
in two, his arms holding close his knees. Beside him, self
portraits portraying a man much younger
than he, eyebrows pressed. An orange blanket
fell across his hands and feet, turned to paper—his eyes
closed, covered in slow air
from his nose. There was a time
when he would be the one awake, patient
for me to join him in the sand littered
with drying weeds. Small trucks, enduring
each storm hidden beneath the slide, would be pushed
across and intro each other. Hornets
and their nests, we knew, were full of honey to stir
with milk worthy of a broken knee if slipped. The new
neighbors brought a fileted lawn where once
ideas of mystery hid the pathways leading to caves
we never found. But here, with the door unlatched, the fridge
left gasping, drooling on the scarred wooden floor, the milk
is warm and you lie asleep in humidity.