Brother

A working revision of the poem.

Kobe Again

Brother,
There was a small earth shaking last week.
It reminded me of '94, or maybe it was '95.
Yeah, '95. It was January, my fourth winter,
the day in Kobe when 6,400 died.
That Japanese tower rocked like a crib
but the walls made it feel like a tomb.
I remember you saying that the ninth floor
never felt so high until that day
when we could almost touch the ground.
The first tremor hit, then the second. I remember
staring up at you in wonder as you came
flying into my room like a Knight in Brilliant Armor
...only you were wearing your Mickey Mouse pajamas.
I thought the world of you, the day the world
fell apart; curling up around me the day 6,400 died.
They say it lasted twenty seconds but I knew it took a lifetime.
The cabinets flew open, the fridge spilled its guts
and that white cabinet of mine landed on top of you.
It probably saved both of our lives.
Then fourteen years later we sat on our porch
and you mentioned to me that you wanted to travel.
To help people. I smiled. Nodded.
And then another January, another earth shaking.
When I heard the news from Haiti, I fell.
I was four again, in Kobe with the earth
quaking with anger around me;
my ears once more hearing your soft,
whispered prayers that tickled my neck
and sounded like a choir of angels
as the TV toppled and the windows shattered.
A quarter million this time. And I was safe
in the most dangerous place. I thought, perhaps,
that moving to Alaska was tempting fate,
almost as if asking for another earth shaking.
This time with no tower to rock me, no Knight
to save me. But no, the shaking followed you:
with your charity work and passion for the needy.
Damn you. You traveled to Haiti
and sent me to Hades. And last year you left me
to face all the quaking alone. No one
to guard, no one to rock, no one to sing
lullabies. Now I sit quietly on my porch, alone.
Humming a prayer that sounds like one's doom.
Because I haven't forgiven myself for your death.
I shouldn't have smiled. I shouldn't have nodded.
And every day is Kobe again.
Sister.