Brothers

I looked at Ben in his transparent cot

and was quiet. 

I'd waited so long, not as long

as my mum. Earlier we had stopped at a toy 

shop, I picked out a tiny dog for him, my dad

said Ben had got me a wind up car and so

the car peeled past the gas heater for the

next week or so.

At home I held Ben for the first time,

a photo was taken and I think about or

look at that picture as I did today and 

wish it was the first knockings of something

in which I learned how to take him

under my wing and didn't watch as he 

fell down the stairs or didn't send him

back to the hospital with a cardboard

book in his eye or grind his gears 

because I liked the shape his mouth made

when he cried, which is the same

shape Rowan's makes, which I don't

like much at all though I still laugh

the same because it seems to help

dissipate the energy.

I wish I could finally accept that

radio silence from Ben is because he

doesn't really like the internet, and that

he is sort of a sybarite who simply lives in the

moment, which is great because now he's

a father too and sometimes - I just go 

somewhere else.

He probably doesn't see that photo and

think well I was cheated out of an elder's

care and concern. Ben pauses, reflects, continues:

he was simply a brother to me, annoying, spiteful

and jealous, as they are. 

He probably could have well benefitted

from that care and concern 

but it only came much later,

once I realised what I had done, 

to him, and myself.

Come join me in Berlin I said, when he

was deep in the throes of crisis, and he did,

just as I learned of my ex-wife's affair, and

so it was we rode round the U-Bahn all day

and I had to remind him that a lot of Germans

just seem to stare, and to not think too much of

it, and I helped talk him down whilst we just

went for it with the mulled wine spiked with 

rum, floating round the Christmas Markets,

cold and wet day drinkers, 

enjoying our break whilst I sat on 

my private pain and embarrassment,

promising I'd tell him one day once it

was time for him to care about me, and I 

think I did, the following summer and not

once did he judge me for how I was handling 

it by then, not once.

I think my favourite memory of Ben will always

be how he just walks into things sometimes and

I have to be either completely ready to feel utter

exasperation or untrammelled joy. And at karaoke,

on Warschauer Straße, he quietly let me 

take my kid gloves off. 

If I recall, we both vomited, 

but when I came back from my turn, 

he had befriended two make up artists and

was wearing a full geisha face, which of course

began running everywhere as soon as he was sick.

We most likely sang Billy Joel until 7 in the

morning. 

And then, in his infinite wisdom, he

decided to get an open faced raw meat sandwich

from the nearest corner shop along with the 

first beers of the day.