Matt died alone at night in a hospital bed in San Diego. When I picture it I imagine him in a private room with a table to the right of the bed that has a lamp on it. Beyond that is a window. The lamp is casting it’s reflection onto the glass and my brother’s so heavily drugged for the pain, he thinks the reflection of the lamp is the moon.
His body broke open and released his soul. Like a black balloon cut loose, it floated out the window, up over the hospital higher and higher and higher until it popped and became….
I wake in the night
To a banging at my window
It’s my bedroom brother
Perched on the ledge
Grinding his torso
Into the glass
Leathery wings folded behind his back.
Why are you doing this to me I scream
Because
He mouths
You want me to.
There was nothing to mark my brother’s passing. His body wasn’t buried. His life was not memorialized, his ashes weren’t scattered at sea. Not even an obituary which might have read: Matthew Dwyer Engler survived by his sister, Lori-Nan.
(Light slowly fades.)