13 Years

Woke up sweating in the sun sprawled across my big brother's grave, shaking and drunk with sleep. I crawled to my feet and walked up into the shade of a young elm tree that must have been planted since the last we came. Vicki, my mom and me cleaned the dirt from the plaque that says his name. Walking to my girlfriends car, it came back down on me. Yeah, I guess I fell to my knees to keep from falling face-first into the dream. The vision that had had me twisting out under the afternoon sky. I didn't know it then but it was 13 years to the day he died. He held his hand in me, like brothers we walked through the colorless world of an alcohol dream. I talked for hours, trying to break through the silence that he held over me. Then he started away, turned his head. "Keep it up so you can die like me." Ever since my brother OD'd I have drifted all over from town to town to town. Every place I go it's always the same. I keep doing junk, I keep going down. My mama got religion and my sisters gave up. Man, I just gave up too. I just died inside. I don't wanna die like George. Everybody says there's things to see, everybody's pointing their fingers at me. I woke up driving after another blackout from another bad drug. I just can't shake this hell that I made for myself, for every other life I touch. I see my sister's son walk the line I walked, he's only sixteen. If he don't learn from my mistakes he's gonna waste away, he's gonna die like me.