*

The kind you want is light like birds like pails of cotton like weight. Air-filled and arid. Not chamois or wool. Use it to scrub your brother down when he returns blue and from frostbite. Use it to stem the trickle that is blood that is your blood coming from his arm that is your arm holding the stem to the leak in his skin that is skin like your skin that comes from the heart right down his side.

This is your element. You are Molybdenum. You are tender like theory. You know enough about cold not to run a too-hot bath for him not to jolt them too hard. You know how to give the limbs their best shot at revision at coming back. There are rules for getting over grief like this. This is a cause a spur a bulk in a backpack. Sheep hearts and onions boiled for days until they resemble one another. Until they go soft and atrophy. So soup.