In the book-lined study where my father counts his aging hours,
framed photos of all sizes stand in neat formation atop the desk.
Familiar family faces peer out from vanished instants and places,
their strange attires and stiff poses indicating a more formal time.
Most of them are gone now, passed on to what lies beyond here.

I have memories for each countenance: a laugh here, a joke there.
Bubby always gave me hugs and chocolate, Uncle told funny tales.
Loving recollections of happy times ease the ache of my mortality,
the emptiness balanced by mental libraries of fond reminiscence,
all but one fading photograph, which starts no replays in my mind.

Black and white, shading into sepia from half a century behind glass,
the image is of a young boy peering over the back of a wooden chair.
Dark hair neatly combed above a perfect forehead, solemn, serious,
beautiful innocent full lips slightly parted in weighty apprehension,
incredible eyes, huge, haunted, under arched brows: he was my brother.

I’ve long heard the whispered stories: golden child, sweet natured, kind,
musically gifted, loving, always devoted to his baby sibling playmate: me.
Until one fatal July morning, his young light was forever extinguished
in the green scummy waters of an unattended backyard swimming pool.
In those cruel depths, much too soon, my brother met the Angel of Death.

A babe of sixteen months, I suffered sudden bereavement with no solace.
Shattered like crystal against marble, my parents withdrew into black grief,
leaving me a legacy of saddened abandonment, a tainted existence for life.
I’ve no memories of the tragedy; my black box wasn’t yet wired to record.
All I have is my father’s old fading photo of the boy with the haunted eyes.

How I wish my older brother hadn’t died! I so needed him to be in my life.
I was miserable growing up, I did it badly, surely he would have helped me.
He could have stopped the tormentors, taught me to drive, screened my dates.
Oh, dear lost brother, I miss you! Wherever Heaven is, I know you’re there.
Put in a good word for me, okay? God will listen. Please, save me a seat?

LW