reburying my great uncle in the attic next to his brother-- i can't remember if we found your mass grave in the philippines or somewhere in thailand but my mom found it on the internet a few years after my grandfather, your brother died-- we looked at a garden of white crosses grown in a photograph on the boxy computer screen-- i was four years old & we kept your triangle-folded american flag on the bottom shelf of a bookcase in the attic-- i liked to spin it like a top-- pluck out the box with the purple heart & pin it on the chest of stuffed elephants & polka-dotted dogs-- the indigo kiss-- a bruise from god-- the kind of goodbye letter that sits heavy in the bottom of an envelope-- when my grandfather returned from world war II his family had moved-- he walked up to his door step to find a different home glow from a window & pondered if all this time he himself had turned into a ghost-- he briefly recalled teaching his brother, you, to kick the coal off the top of the freight cars down by the railroad tracks to heat the house when cold snapped in november-- he wondered who was taller as he walked ponderous down a back street in south philadelphia-- we buried my grandfather in the attic-- a jar of ashes & he mumbles about the war in the cracked knuckles of the house as heat rattles through it's bones in november-- it was our family in the window on the door step that night-- my brother with a encyclopedia of military weapons in his lap & me eating a slice of my mother's banana bread from the counter-- we invited him inside but he walked away-- he didn't want to go home without a brother-- so i'm here-- a plane ride away from anywhere we could pretend to come from-- at a white cross in thailand or the philippines or your real bones still sinking into the dirk of okinawa where we presume you were shot-- i stand there & think of something to ask you about but all i know about you is in the corners of a folded american flag & a royal purple heart-- i ask you if you eat banana bread or if your mother forgets to water the herb bushes she keeps on the porch-- i sit down-- i packed us sandwiches-- i figured you would eat something like tuna salad-- no i didn't want to share-- i ate before i left-- i wanted to ask you if there was something you left out of the letters-- if there was ever something you wanted to tell someone that you thought about in the time since you saw my grandfather, your brother-- you're still taking your time to answer-- we could chew slowly because we were dead-- well i was just pretending to be dead so we could talk-- you didn't want to leave with me even though you had enjoyed the change of conversation-- i knew about the family curse of coming home to a different house-- to find your name has a new address-- this one is a perched on a hill outside a town called kutztown that you probably have never heard of-- i told you the house has a painted green & maroon porch now & on warm nights in the summer your brother will sit outside in a neon blue lawn chair & wait for you-- i brought you a jar for you to bury yourself in-- we're going to the attic where unfinished letters are written-- i uproot the white cross-- fill my pockets with the remnants of your bones on a hill in okinawa-- mixed with bullet shells & singed grass-- my brother turns the page to his book on military weapons-- i dangle my feet from the bar stool at the counter & we listen to you & my grandfather, your brother unearth your body's ashes in the attic--
