"The Attic."
Jon Anderson, where are you?
He was flipping through this earlier, and went,
I love your poem called "The Attic."
He was just pretending.
"The Attic."
Praise to my older brother, the 17-year-old boy,
who lived with me in the attic like an exiled prince grown hard
in his confinement, bitter, bent to his evening task,
building the imaginary building on the drawing board
they've given him in school.
His tools gleam under the desk lamp.
He is as hard as the pencil he holds, drawing the lines
straight along the ruler.
Tower prince, young king, prays to the boy
who has willed his blood to cool in his heart to slow.
He's building a structure with so many doors
it's finally quiet, so that when our father climbs heavily
up the attic stairs, he doesn't at first hear him pass down
the narrow hall.
He lifts the clear plastic of one page
to look more closely at the plumbing,
he barely hears the springs of my bed
when our father sits down, he's imagining
where the boiler might go, because where it is now
isn't working.
Not until I've slammed the door behind the man stumbling down
the stairs again does my brother look up from where he's working.
I know it hurts him to rise, to knock on my door and come in.
And when he draws his skinny arm around my shaking shoulders.
I don't know if he knows he's building a world where
I can one day love a man.
He sits there without saying anything.
Praise him.
I know he can hardly bear to touch me.