Oh, Brother

Hey, there is something we need to talk about.  I was going through my writing the other day and found all these poems I was writing to you.  They all say how much I love you and I'm trying, in them, to express gratitude for the way you treat me and make me feel about my self.  So I want to tell you that I'm sorry for what happened.  You don't know how embarrassed I feel.  A drunken phone call at 3 am and I'm ruining our friendship and now it's been 18 months since we've sat together on your porch drinking Miller High Life from those funny shaped bottles, talking about things, our journey, and listening to the lonely traffic roll up and through and over the dips on Hope Valley in the darkness of the earliest parts of morning before a white thread can be distinguished from a black.  We were two space cadets repairing the damage to our ships, taking turns holding the light for one another.  I had never felt so much less like a piece of  meat than when I was with you and even though you don't share so much of my genetic material, I think it was supposed to be that you were also my brother.  

So, I'm sorry.  How insulting it must have been to listen to me intoxicatedly insinuating that I needed something more from you.  The terrible ultimatum I delivered, "Oh look, when I get back home, I need to be with someone and it's either going to be you or this horrible horrible toolbox of a human being because I need somebody and I'll take what I can get."  I threw back into your face all of the secret jokes and looks and said they wouldn't be good enough anymore.  I demanded something more, something I didn't need and you couldn't give.  And I'll say it would have been enough to know that I was special and your sister, but in my wild desperate need to have everyone love me more than they love anyone else, I asked for what was not mine to have even though I know it wouldn't have been right.  And in my pettiness I was insulted, that somehow I wasn't good enough for you.  So I came back and gave myself to someone who didn't deserve me, and was too stupid to even know he was alive.  Ha.  How many of you really know you're alive?  What a terrible affront that in that I not only totally fucked our friendship, but I put you on his level.  Well it's either you or this ass-master.  Dude, I'm sorry.  I didn't mean it.  Can you just understand that I was terribly alone?  Can you just understand that what I needed was what I got from him and now I'm free?  Can you understand that my head wasn't working right and that I was still halfway between worlds after having almost left this one for another?

If there was someway to take it back, I wouldn't, though.  I have the greatest thing I may ever be allowed in this life.  At a price, yes, but what wouldn't I have paid to gain this?  And now you and I have fallen by the wayside and all I can do is stand in the light left by this comet's tail as it rises, rises.  

This is not sufficient.  This is not what I had thought it would be.  This is a poor attempt at assuaging the shame I feel and the guilt for hurting and degrading you and our friendship.  I may spend the rest of my life trying to articulate what I feel for you.  But this is the start of it.  I love you, Brother.  

If you should find it in you to forgive me, to condescend to keep some company with me, I will feed you and give you whatever it is that you need if only I get to laugh with you in your presence and feel you pleased to be with me one more time.   And I may pray it lasts a long time.

  If someday, the world is ending, and you should find yourself wanting to see me again, there will be an empty, comfortable chair on my porch in the nighttime next to me, under the stars where we can watch it all fall down.