All These Rooms

my brother is

walking down Jamieson holding

a piece of tinfoil

it is July

but he is wearing his blue and red bathrobe

cause the cold gray thing inside

makes his skin turn to paper

and the wrinkles in his face

cut deeper

this dying will be slow

this dying will take years

and he will

lose his eyes along the way

I know this ugly gray

thing

cause I have it too

then as he crosses the street

onto the other side

of Jamieson

he becomes a mountain

hundreds of feet tall

dense with redwood trees

and the breath of deer

and all the fury of his young body

is finally buried beneath the

cold blue veins of ancient rivers

so that even we

with all our mustard seeds

all our attempts to make him better

make him happy make him

ours

cannot move him