Knock

I thought his hair would come straight off of his head in the wind

Like when the autumn breeze strips the maple branches of their dignity and makes its colors drop to the floor

I thought my heart would drop to the floor

My brother had never been so serious before

He was almost fragile in his humility

Like Granny’s chinaware, hidden behind a protective glass so that no one could get their hands on it

Because if there’s one thing I learned from surviving childhood it is that people will
leave their fingerprints on the most impressionable, delicate pieces of you

So you have to hide, behind your gigantic shell of a self so that people can look in and wonder
just how breakable you are but they can’t

Break you

My brother was made out of bullet-proof glass

One day, his glass shattered

He held my hand, which is something a shield cannot do

He cried, which is something a fortress cannot do

He hugged me, which is something a barrier cannot do

The prickliness of the barbed-wire fence that surrounded his heart broke loose

And I was left with a soldier, which is all I ever wanted him to be

For a few simple moments I saw him open his book

I studied his pages as fast as I could because, when the moment was over,
he fell back behind the glass that protects him

I had spent all of my life trying to peel him back as if he were an orange--
as if the surface was hard and distasteful but the inside was sweet.  

All this time I’d been trying to break through the door of his heart and all along all that he wanted me to do

Was knock