My brothers saved me a million times
when we were little,
when our back yard was ten times
bigger then it is now,
when we walked downtown
barefoot in summer.
Jim ate wild garlic that grew
by the haunted house on our road,
ran home smiling and breathed
in our mother's face. She laughed.
I could never cry when he hugged me.
John talked of his day at the kitchen table
and enthralled the three of us for hours.
He won awards in grade school
writing melancholy, beautiful stories.
My brothers saved me a million times.

Love is a mystifying, ethereal thing,
so powerful.
It held my world together then.
When we divided, I fell into pieces.
Now I'm finding it within myself.
I promised not to write of sadness
anymore, of fear and pain,
being lost in the mind,
of why and how, what and who.
Suffice it to say,
My brothers saved me a million times.