he is sickly, chocolate brown

even though my mom
is whiter than Wonderbread
(Irish, Italian, Portuguese)
and my dad is just naturally tan
(Albanian)
he is brown

his head is so big
his eyes set so wide, so brown they are black
(they aren’t beautiful except that they are)
and his legs are so tiny, wrinkled
like an old person
with the tubes sticking everywhere
every
which
way

he is six ounces even

in the pictures
she is still bloated from her pregnancy
except her face is
thin like a razor and white
translucent, even

he is small in my father’s big hands
big six three man holding this tiny
fragile boy with his face covered
so the light won’t hurt his eyes too bad
and a cap so the cold won’t hurt his scalp too bad
and swaddled so he’s safe from the
sterile hospital air

i love him

except that i hate him
even though i never knew him
because when he died he took
my parents with him.

there is a tiny stone angel in our garden
for him and i plant flowers in his arms
but somewhere
i want to know
where is the angel for me?

--

My older brother was born in November and died shortly afterward, two years before I was born. He was diagnosed with Smith-Lemli-Opitz, a severe congenital disease of which I am almost certainly a carrier. I know that I am incredibly selfish, but it is hard to live up to a person who never lived at all.