Sibling Rivalry

sometimes the hallway is an ocean,
especially at night
especially during the storms that
rock the house, that pull at our roots.
sometimes he throws out debris,
boxes of toys and old clothes that don’t
fit him anymore and he stares at me like he
wants me to protest.
sometimes he lets out sharks
because he wants blood, he wants revenge
and he doesn’t care who he catches in the crossfire.
and sometimes he does neither,
he draws himself up and wades through the wreckage
and shuts the door quietly,
quietly goes into his room and sits out the
storm in a daze.
I wish I could rattle him out of it,
but the distance between my door and his is
much further than it looks
and there’s an ocean between us.
this is when I turn the volume up,
when I will the strained and clumsy music to filter in
through the cracks of the door frame.
I know it will claw its way into his chest,
settle down somewhere just beneath his throat,
and tell him all the things I never could
because I can’t swim that ocean,
I just can’t.
in the morning I get up at dawn so I can
clear away the gore before he notices;
it’s the least I can do.
I stack the bodies and burn them,
I force the water stains off the walls and straighten
the picture frames that were knocked off course.
and just when I get the reek of blood and salt out of the air,
he stumbles into the kitchen, all bleary eyes and tousled hair,
and he never says ‘I know’ or ‘don’t worry’,
just pours himself a glass of water and asks
for that song I played.