I need to say something meaningful about
the passage of time. The grey hairs that haunt
me even in this youth. My mother says this
is normal; she had them at my age. The photo
book back in Ponce shows her 30 years ago
and she looks the same. At her side, my brother,
halved from me, now in his middle age. He tells
me he has always wondered who I am. Our
father sits in the basement, wheezing, like
an old fan that stays on for convenience.
His footsteps are still heavy on the stairs.
He was always broad, a soldier in every life,
running through the desert, weaving through
fallen walls and children in helmets, posing
on the backs of camels or in the city streets
of Rome. I want to say something but the words
are stuck in my throat. I go a week ignoring
my brother, little green icon of curiosity,
because when he asks, what will I tell him
about those lost years, my adolescence,
where his name never left our father’s lips,
silent, like a curse? Or will I tell him of my
mother’s photographs, a small boy clinging
to the fabric of a skirt, packs of bubblegum
in the backseat, before I was a thought

or a promise?