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Sadness begins for my brother and me
the night he wakes, asking that I come see
Princess Leia in the living room by the wood stove.
I watched a twig's shadow scratch
on his tongue while he struggled
to mouth the words, his stutter grown
in the night the way all darkness grows-
by blotting out the light, my brother's tongue
confounded. I pieced together each particle,
the vocal fragments, to make a picture
of Nathan watching the movie,
how still he sat when she walked on the screen,
how he swooped his head with Luke Skywalker
swinging on the rope that carried him and Leia to safety,
her hair rolled to pinwheels on the side of head.
Her voice was fluid, so sure of itself.
I rose with him to go find her.
The moon shone bright, lighting the way.
We ran to keep our backsides safe,
but no one was there. Empty blocks of moonlight.
Nathan searched the kitchen, the bathroom,
the wood box with spiders, the cupboard under the sink,
the terrible dark - space behind the couch,
stuttering the whole time, she must be there.
Finally I opened the wood stove to stoke the fire,
and that's when his tongue froze completely.
The firelight dancing the way it does,
we sat and watched, two brothers silent;
Nathan searching now for a way
to explain his failure to a brother he adored,
and I, the elder, who couldn't hear the silent wrangling
of flame twisted like boys' bodies tangle
over most anything: magnifying glass, box of rocks.
In the orange light that washed over the spell of silver and shadow,
my brother became invisible while I knelt,
hating my own failures:
a boy with a defect of disbelief.
I remained oblivious as Leia must have been
when Nathan saw her, kneeling,
head bowed as if in prayer.
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