Hi Storm

In mania, the body unbinds itself. The skeleton’s dense marrow becomes hollow, an avian adjustment. It is accelerated evolution. Fluttering and floating in a slew of thoughts like nervous wind chime chatter. My brother blew in through the rattling gate accompanied by October’s cruelest gale. Eyes unwillingly wide, levered by a crowbar his hazel doorways ripped from their hinges. He ran fervently through the streets of West Chester with lungs coated with cannabis and amphetamines until there was blood beneath his toenails, dripping out just like Jesus’ wine weeping out from his searing limbs. As he entered into the home of our distant childhood, his back burned from the warm wrath of penitent leather the self-flagellation, the begging for the flames of Purgatory To appease the eyes of a looming Lord his fate-sealing gaze hidden in twilight’s comforting veil He says he holds a guilt beyond human comprehension, that he is an evil person. I tell him we are just flawed people. After a decade of intentful detachment, my brother cracks open his ribcage as it blooms like a flower from his sternum. He says there is a sickness in his soul, and that I will never truly know him. My mother and father have had heads made of granite since he has come home. There are heavy eyes shadowed with bags made of storm clouds. They have prayed with their clergy. They have contacted multiple attorneys. My sibling is a storm that has wrought ruin, but he can heal. His violent storm might sow a beautiful season The warmth of his first real smile will bring upon renaissance, and as the tears and snot seep into the soil of my shoulder our cheeks may grow a vibrant emerald moss.