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The hardest truth in this life
is that we make our biggest decisions
when we still don’t know what’s going on.

I have one brother, 10 years older.
He married a dark haired sex machine
In Colorado with the army.

He thought he could bring her back to Mississippi,
work security in a new casino,
book football on the side,
and live in our grandmother’s old house.

She stayed two years.
He never was the same.

Then he fathered two boys
with a hard, hard woman
and built fences for money.
And when the fences were all built,
He started cooking meth.

They fought worse
than any rabid dogs ever could have.
The police took them away twice
with their sons crying.

Then she left
but the state came in
and took the boys.

It’s hard to watch your brother
lay down on the tracks that way.

You try to help.
You give him money.
You talk up God.
You kick him in the ass.
Nothing.

And then I tried something different.
With my good job,
I paid a lot of money for tickets
To see our favorite team,
The New Orleans Saints.

And on my brother’s birthday,
they were playing at home
versus the Dallas Cowboys.

Beauty motivates.

He was ill with pneumonia when
I picked him up.
I bought him a sweater with the team mascot
and we stopped at the gas station
and he asked for a seven dollar bottle
of yellow tequila.

He drank it all before we got to the Dome
while hacking over and over.
I could hear the liquid popping in his lungs.
He didn’t say much, just “thank you, little brother.”

We left in the 3rd quarter to beat traffic
and stopped for more yellow tequila
and he slept all the way home.

But my brother wasn’t void of wisdom.
He taught me two things that I’ve always kept-
“The world doesn’t give a fuck about you”
and “there is no such thing as fairness.”

Don’t judge.

Ridgeland, MS – 12/21/11