what to remember when eating our siblings &
the intimate perfection of strangers

when i was 7 
my father & i gathered tadpole eggs
like bunches of grapes &
watched the creatures
grow legs from commas-- turn into 
apostrophes and em dashes
in the tank-- they 
finished our sentences-- spoke
in the unparallel language
of silence-- they talked like
my brother who lets weeks
drown in his throat & 
cuts words from his own tongue
like thin slices of fine cheese--
smoked Gouda & brie--
so as the tadpoles grew they 
shared death together--
the commas falling like black
tear drops to the bottom of the tank
to disappear into the glossy terrain
of aquarium rocks--
the burial ground of a 
kaleidoscope eye-piece-- only two
grew large enough to no longer
be classified as punctuation--
these brothers swam
in a race against each other's tails--
my own brother has
been living in a race against windows--
i like to think that i know 
him & the moon that sleeps in 
the rims of his glasses 
but there is nothing more intimate
than knowing you have become strangers
& as long as you stand back
enough everyone keeps
a piece of perfection--
i imagine him always as a
small boy laying on the 
speckled carpet of the living room
to watch television while
the air conditioner turned us
into plants-- the boy who
looked at me from the other side of the
fish tank-- the boy
with a handful of fish pellets
eager to drop them like
a fist of commas--
i know me brother only distantly & 
i feel sorry that i don't write
letters to him--
that i don't tell him what he used
to look like on a white plastic
chair on the porch in the summer--
us both in our underwear because
we were too young for people
to be afraid of our bodies--
back in the tank the tadpoles
circled faster & faster
as if trying to make a language
between each other--
as if trying to expand the walls
that contained them--
so one day i came home 
from school to find there was
only one-- he was slow & mouth
gaping full of legs-- an 
almost-frog with the features of
his face stretching into place & 
in his mouth his still- shaping brother--
he swallowed & swallowed--
bent into a parenthesis--
but could not complete himself--
floated to the bottom
of the tank
to lay on his stomach on the
carpet-- listen to the filter
turn him into a stranger--
i watched the tadpole sink
to the bottom of the tank & when
my brother asked what had happen
to the other one
i told him that 
they must have grown apart--
i've written every poem in some
way addressed to my brother--
sometimes he gets to be 
the 'you' i'm talking to
but i like to keep it a question--
sometimes i'm talking to
the tadpole dying on the bottom
of his fish tank--
sometimes i'm angry at him
for eating his brother--
sometimes i'm sympathetic &
i listen to him cry about
the intimacy of loneliness--
i never ever ever 
meant to become him--
a comma-- an em dash
& eternal circling
until one of us 
drown in the other--