Kalli Stone

A Brother's Love

When you were born, you, The Beloved,

The Chosen Son, the cosmos all stood still

In wonder and waited for your first cry.

I waited too, my dear brother,

But when the Heavens called

And sang out your name,

My own was left to wallow

In nothingness

Because I had been marked out

For packs of wolves and their howling teeth.

Your hair, made from the notes

Of that Enlightened Angel

Grew long and yellow,

While mine was full of serpents’ heads

That bowed in shame and twisted themselves

Into the blind corners of my eyes.

Even when your winter finally arrived,

And the sheep were shorn,

And the crops were dust,

God ignored the cracked teeth of the cold

While the ice made phantom blue rivers

Through my veins.

You were so immune to it all, you,

The bronzed Adonis

Created from summer’s heat.

How green my eyes glinted

With every sweet thing you produced,

And sometimes, I wondered

If holiness had been

A thing new to Him

Before His thoughts turned to you?

But I did love you sometimes, brother,

When you found yourself in despair, and reached

To touch my yearning soul with the bandaged

Fingers of a leper.

And when your blood cried out to its God

From the parched face of the Earth,

How I loved you then.