SEVENTEEN

It was cold for California when my phone rang half past 3, my little brother’s on the other line. He’s shaking like a leaf. At 17 years old, he lost his best friend on a eld. There’s no battle in our history book compared to how he feels. Alabaster faces, all lined up, turning gray. I watched my brother hold a casket before his graduation day. The boy’s poor mother cried with screams that echoed through the town. Like a Siren on a shoreline, begging God to let her drown. So my brothеr crawled beside hеr and he got beneath the sheet. He let a woman hold him, so that she could make believe. She said, “Your arms are a bit smaller, and your hair has got a wave, but you smell just like my little boy. You’ve almost got his face.” So he lay there on the couch until the sky turned red and tan. And in a full-grown woman’s arms, my little brother was a man.