Where the Trillium Grow

 In the shadow of your loud philodendrons, jabbering away like excited children  

your old garden, made of railroad ties and twine, flecks of sharp rust that sparked off your old fence whenever we touched it, and the stylish sculptures beneath big bracts of mulberries that tasted—  

like stale warm water. 

 

a place for brothers to drink cold whiskey and burn dank weed 

and the higher one got, the clearer they could hear those big, spoiled plants. Chattering away distractedly, like the squeaks of the niece you’ll never know. At your funeral, so inappropriate for the occasion, and simultaneously the high point of the day.  

And it falls to us, the other witches of the coven, to carry the banner, to lift the heavy sheet into the future, to embrace the storm of inevitability.  

And confessionally, I feel it acutely—     

It all feels so precognitive, so planned and rehearsed, so familiar and practiced, so...known. 

And I feel you brother, in the emergence of the trilliums, in the doggedness of the Lophostemon, where graffiti populates over broken concrete, in the depths of the forests we used to hike consumed in the tasks of juvenile desires.  

 and I must pick up these broken things; these broken feelings, the hurt and the violence, and form them into something greater—  

And I feel it there— your power unto me, fractured against our other members, your craft belongs to the coven. as we are all greater than the sum of ourselves

Given unwillingly. Though I feel it, in the tips of my fingers, when buying firearms for the coming revolution, electric and considerate, cool and brave. To the bitter, exhausted end. How I would absolutely exchange this for your enormous presence. As if the volta of your soul surges between us, involuntarily.  

I am gathering the fragments. As shredded fabric, beyond the possibility of repair. I understand, as only your closest friends could. I understand. The future will not accept the same of myself— And I cannot either. 

& I will fight, I will fight them until my soul is in ruins; I will fight them until there is nothing left. 

As An iguana in the curtains. I will not make it easy, and I promise to honor you by never giving up. I know the heaviness of this reality, and the strength of our hands. As the existence of freewill must be proven to be valid. Come away from this place and its banality.   

Brother, retreat to the redwoods, to the mountains where we hiked as children, beyond the manzanita and the shitty ants, where the trillium grow. Rest your soul in the depths of the forest, 

& we will be with you, 

in time.