My older brother smokes a cigarette on my balcony and stares
       out over his life. All the women

he’s ever slept with are down there playing volleyball, except
       his ex-wife, who reclines

on a cypress branch, painting tiny dollar signs onto her fingernails,
       waiting for the monthly check

to arrive. His biological father, Butch, the dentists, who
       he only ever met once, is down there,

cooking blueberry pancakes for the half-sisters my brother
       has never met. Butch’s parents

didn’t approve of Mom and her cheap Catholic blood, so he split
       when bro was just three letters

buried in embryo. She’s down there too, next house over, laughing
       so hard at a joke some fool just told

her head pops clean off her neck, rolls across the linoleum,
       leaving pink lipstick marks

every couple feet. Nothing’s funny up here. Ut’s Thanksgiving,
       and the best we can do is each other.

We could run down there, get younger with each step, till we’re
       kids sneaking into houses, searching

for the bedroom we once shared, and I’d remember how much
       I looked up to him, how he said the word

boss when something was cool. And hey, there’s the school bus
       where he loaded my mouth

with curse words and aimed me at pretty girls. And, look—
       there’s Mrs. Sperr, my Montessori

school teacher, waving, outside the hospital where I was born.
       My limbs begin to shrivel.

I’m carried down a luminous corridor to a room, where Mom lies
       on her back, smiling like she’s never

seen me before. She pastes a salty kiss on my cheek, then giant
       hands swing me to her open and shiny legs.