When I Was Young
Wheeler Light
My brother looked like my father
and I looked like my brother.
The first time he made me bleed
Max hit me in the face with a drumstick.
I thought, This is just what brothers do.
brothers watch wrestling, chase girls, chase
each other, play games adults are scared
to play, fall climb trees, grow up
but continue to be brothers.
Years later, crying at beach,
my brother tells me he is sorry for everything.
I think This is just what brothers do—
brothers have fathers who treat
their sons like brothers.
I make coffee and watch the sun rise.
I never hit Max hard enough
to make him cry. The eyelid,
just another bloody lip.
A fist is what an apology isn’t.
Us screaming at the drum kit,
sobbing at the beach.
Which do we call music?
My brother,
one of us will always be younger.
It is just what brothers do,
be younger and younger
until the sky is so blue
and so clear—
Wheeler Light currently lives in Brooklyn, NY. He received his BA in Creative Writing and Literature from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. An excerpt from his first book, Blue Means Snow, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and for the Best of the Net Anthology by Pretty Owl Poetry and is the 2018 Mercury Cafe Grand Slam Champion. Light has featured at poetry slams and open mic ventures across the country including the Bowery Poetry Club, Steel City Slam, and the Dirty Gerund. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Hobart, New Delta Review, and December Magazine, among others. He is the author of Blue Means Snow (Bottlecap Press 2018), and Hometown Onomastics (Pitymilk 2019).