for my brother
i write for a boy.
who i've met
only a handful
of times.
i write for a boy.
who i did not
know
until i was already
a person
with a hard shell
and a
prejudice against
the world.
i write for a boy.
who i should have
loved
every minute of the day
who i should have
fought with
every now and then,
like siblings do
who i should have
known.
i write for a boy.
who lives so close
and yet so
far
away from me.
i write for a boy.
who is my brother
from the same mother,
but who was raised in a different family
because his father did not
want
him when he barely a cluster of
cells.
i write for a boy.
who is no longer a boy
but is, instead,
a man.
i write for a man.
who i love despite the fact
that we are half siblings that
grew up
in different worlds,
unaware of each other.
i write for a man.
who might never be
"Uncle" to my future
children.
i write for a man.
and i write for those that have lost
siblings,
not to death or divorce or the law,
but to adoption.
i write for a man.
who i wish to know
like i know my other
siblings.
i write for a man.
for i hope he will
know
that he is wanted by
myself
my siblings
and
my mother
who only gave him up
twenty-two
years ago
so that he would be raised by
a mother
and
a father
who loved and wanted him
instead of
just a mother,
just half of a family.
i write for a man.
and i hope he
is well.