A Memory of Birthing A Star

We Create Even Amidst the Pain of Trauma

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Creation unfurls while my closest nemesis and beloved brother tormented by the pain of parental neglect compulsively projects his agony along with his blazing beauty

I've not seen what tomorrow brings

Because I've seen too much of the day after that

I'm still haunted by the mystery of what I've seen of yesterdays

A long, long, long time ago I saw my brother die. I was eight

I saw he'd not live much past his 34th year. He was a joy on one hand: he took after my mother and shone like the sun at dawn, high noon and sunset all at once .

He hand-made my barbie doll clothes when I was four and five, I remember. He cooked the best buckwheat Belgian waffles I've ever had in my life to date all on an old-fashioned iron heated on the top of the electric stove original from the 1950’s. He’d flip the waffle iron instinctively to cook the other side. It was the most scrumptious meal my tongue ever tasted. The Aunt Jemima syrup pooled rapturously steaming in deep boxed wells swirling with the melting butter. A high for the fat craving brain myelinated neurons hurling lightning bolts of joy as the smell