"To You, To Your Brother" by Tim Caston

"To You, To Your Brother"

A Corpse is a Corpse Is a Corpse. Until it is embalmed, left waxy by the process made to preserve you, after the world has torn your body to shreds. Like a lamb thrown to lions. Your eyes: closed. Your suit: pressed. Your lips: sewn shut, as if to prevent you from screaming to this room of mourning children “Live! I know a pain that ends in darkness. I have felt the worlds prick and then its quick release. I have felt the tears of my Father glide gently down my bare shoulder and was helpless to dry them.” The school will be quiet the day after. Students will drift, like petals from dogwood trees. White. Weightless. Shell shocked from a war they did not know they were fighting. Your name will not be mentioned, except in hushed tones at cafeteria tables and will always be preceded by a hesitation, as if bleeding has turned your name into a dangerous incantation. Your brother will not be seen, but will not be marked absent. Your classmates will approach your altar one by one and kneel before your wax. Looking, half hoping, to see the place where the log pierced your side and opened your body to the world. They will remember that moment. They will cry. They will wipe their tears and snot onto their sleeves and gasp for air conscious that you cannot breath it. They will go back to school. Then they will graduate, and by then you will have been buried, but they will carry you through that moment, and the rest. -T.G. Caston

Photo by Tim Caston