Brother, in Pieces

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By Leslie Contreras Schwartz

You were five, or eleven
years old. a .22 bullet­­­­
clinking your teeth.

you were twenty-
five and asking me to stay
without asking. you were

eleven, or fourteen, teeth
punched out by boys.
Twelve when your swallow

& the end and the vial, crumbled

and the dollar bill, your saved
pennies. golden red copper in its
day old scar, under your sleeve

and my cut-up arms. Let’s count 
them, I said. The splits in your totaled
car, your knocked out face. My forearms

covered, already bleeding for you.

I can buy so much, this throw down
bills of wet sorrow collection plate.

and I humored you, love you.
Come here, sweet, I’ll save something for you.

You were four when I left and hit
my floor. I’d lied. I never came back.

Left my head where I fell it. I laid.
my neck waiting for snap while you

watched. stayed lying.

Men kept coming
and flattening.

Get up, you said. Get up, sis.

I spent my nineteenth birthday
at the gynecologist’s office

getting multiplying cells
scraped. then drove home to
eat with dad and other brother

to nightglow and television.
where were you?

mom can never come
to such things and I can’t ask
where you left. She told you

what happens anyway,
the girls these girls become.

The girls beneath lids with my son next to me. My daughters.
And you. My children that aren’t you. And you.

At 20, I gave you a penny & you
ran hide-and-seek with shadows.

My first apartment infested
with ghost girls. And you.

And orphaned. We should have
shaved off our hair. Shared twins
and heads. We thought

the same shed, the dead rodents in our parents’
wall. Get the fuck outa there—I said, slamming the door

instead saying See you next month
see you I’ll see you

next year, or tomorrow,
eleven or twenty. Please 
let it be twenty-six,
twenty-seven. To myself,

to my son or my brother.

I will be your
eleven or thirteen for you, swear

on my child’s piggy bank.

Knocked face and all the ones.
I would spend every last penny,
every last bill to see you come brighten

my door, ours.

Photo: Danielle Chisler

Leslie Contreras Schwartz is the author of Who Speaks for Us Here (Skull + Wind Press, 2020), and the collections Nightbloom & Cenote and Fuego (St. Julian Press, 2016, 2014). Her work has appeared in Gulf Coast, Missouri Review, Iowa Review, Pleiades, among other publications. She is the current Houston Poet Laureate.