It was August of ’15
and all the colors and sounds
were perfectly in season
with the heat just so,
though the humidity was
lower than it often was

I remember riding an empty bed
clutching a pillow imagining
all of the ways a man could
betray his brother

A shoe dropped 210 days later
and in a moment I thought I knew
at least a few of those ways
as plain as if they’d
come to lay on me

But now, in august of ’16
I am left sitting on the porch
of my old-fashioned city home
and I am forced to wonder;
if a man could betray his brother,
were they truly brothers at all?