Busy Life

Our long,
red-chested summer days were spent playing baseball
using a makeshift bat from a broken,
twisted tree branch off the Osage Orange in our backyard,
and rotting hedge apples
as our balls to hit homeruns.

“Here comes the brains,”
my brother would shout
as he threw the convoluted ball,
with its tough, yellow-green membrane
and rotten black cavities,
which would explode the instant it struck the branch,
releasing mixed smells of citrus and earthworm.

Now,
thoughts of launching the apples
alongside the boyish jaw of my older brother
remain in my backseat,
underneath our relationship that went awry
right after he swallowed the bottle of Xanax,
as I sit in traffic,
wait in line to pay for the electricity,
or watch the casket’s lid slowly close on his wax-like face.