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My brother—who I've always resented—whose shortcomings are so plentiful and embarrassing as to make me resent him all our life—growing up and even now—my younger brother who for years wanted to be a rapper—who wanted, it seemed, his whole life, nothing more than to rap—whose insecurities and insufficiencies have always manifested in the most annoying ways—my younger—middle—brother—who growing up attempted to emulate all of my worst qualities—and failed even at that—ignoring my good qualities—growing up with all the anger of a middle child—my younger taller-than-me brother—fragile and inept in every way—who I've resented more or less completely ever since he turned eighteen—and even before he turned eighteen—texted me and our mother on the night before Thanksgiving—Dude, fuck, my roommate just fucking died dude! I tried to revive him but it was too late—my younger brother who always lies about everything and makes everything about him—who can take anything—even a dead roommate in his hands—and make it worse—proceeded to come home for Thanksgiving—to come home from his halfway house in Louisiana—my brother the failed hero—who had merely tried to revive his now-dead roommate—saying all sorts of things the failed hero my brother—who underneath his chest tattoo and face tattoo or behind or even underneath his skin presumably from youth—but who in the online article saying he was charged with second-degree murder didn't look then like my brother—but who in truth I used to get mistaken for—and who I used to throw "parties" with when I was seven and he was five, listening to Smash Mouth through speakers and jumping up and down on his bed—my younger brother who was apparently asleep when 38 his dead roommate died—got out of jail years later and then went back to jail again—went to prison and then got out again and seemed a little different on the phone when he would call then—was standing outside of the prison in Florida when I drove three hours through the swamp to pick him up—the whole time resenting him and imagining fighting him—fighting him and winning—fighting him and winning outside of the jail there in front of my mom—and when he got inside the car he handed me something that at first looked like a rope—but was I saw when I unraveled it a cross necklace he had made for me from ripped up braided towel—the cross dyed with coffee grounds—and for the drive back I felt sentimental biblical-level irony—the proud religious brother and the junkie Prodigal son—humbling, humbling—I loved my brother that afternoon and tweeted about it—but then I didn't hear from him and I went back to where I lived and then I got a call from my mother a while later that he had died there at my parents house—I was sitting in my car beneath the trees.
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