1.

 

As a big brother, you grow up an oppressor.

Your very presence compresses the air

In the little one’s chest.

They bellow their displeasure,

The oppressed, expressing every hurt,

Blurting the measure

Of each Pascal of pressure you exert.

 

2.

 

We used to fight all the time,

For a decade or more we waged war.

 

Life was an Itchy and Scratchy cartoon,

Your head monsooning blood

When I dropped you on a radiator, mid-scrap.

The stars smeared across the sky,

When the corner of a hardback, malevolently hurled,

Burled across the room,

Caught me flush in the eye.

 

That persecuted, little brother voice,

A blaring air-raid siren fired off

At the slightest provocation,

Appealing to the authority of choice,

Imploring intervention

From none so vague as the jury at the Hague,

Or a neutral Geneva Convention.

 

 

3.

 

It is not hatred, but proximity that problematizes.

Nearness, within a lack of space:

A shared bedroom,

The best toys held in common.

Lines must be drawn,

The blues are mine,

The reds are thine,

A black marque and a white.

I’m always the ship, you’re the car,

The hat saved to crown any unfortunate third party

Who dares gatecrash our phoney war.

 

 

4.

 

A victory won at an outsider’s expense

Accentuates the conflict’s intensity.

 

Arcane rules, long accepted,

Re-explained to the guileless novitiate.

A truce, mutely declared,

While we round on the only child,

Kippering them in their untrained,

Non-combatant naivete.

 

They crawl home, bewildered,

Ears drooping, tail swinging low.

The ceasefire no longer useful,

Back to the battle we go.

 

 

5.

 

And then I left.

You did too.

 

The old battleground lay trashed for a while,

Cratered, deserted, silent as the tomb.

 

Gradually,

Imperceptibly,

Life regrew amid the gloom.

Walls dismantled, brick by brick,

Re-rendered as a guest room.

 

And when, occasionally, we discern

The peace our parents wrought,

Conscience asks us each in turn

Why we ever fought?