Reunion

Back in town for my high school reunion,
nearly everyone unrecognizable, I’m reliving

freshman year basketball tryouts
with an old friend, both of us still angry

they had us run sprints until someone
— we can’t remember who — threw up

in the gym’s only water fountain.
I’m also thinking about you, of course,

how lately, I haven’t been able to summon
your face the way I want. Frightened

I’ll forget, I’ve put your face everywhere:
atop my dresser, my nightstand, my desk,

on the wall, the bookshelf, the fridge.
Just when we’re getting worked up

over the practice we took charges from seniors,
my friend’s wife, a woman I’ve never met,

but who knew you, comes back
with beers, and interrupts, suddenly,

when she realizes I’m your brother. We both pause,
acknowledge your death without words,

before she tells me how nice it is
that she can see your face again in mine.


Net

After a day at the town pond, 
and still a few months before 
my brother overdosed,
my four-year-old was telling him 
about the older boys he saw 
catching sunfish in a net.
That’s when my brother, 
high on his usual mix
of painkillers and muscle relaxers,
stood up from the floor where he’d been
stretched out on his stomach,
trying to manage his spasming back.
Out in my parents’ garage,
he opened a step ladder
and, as if nothing was crumbling 
in his spine, climbed
until his body disappeared 
into the rafters.
Behind a stack of 2x4s, 
saved pine boards,
and rolled-up bales of insulation,
he knew he’d find
his childhood net, still there 
after more than twenty years. 
When he descended,
he placed the net 
into my son’s hand, 
the three of us
caught up in something
we couldn’t yet understand.