The moon mourns for my dead brother who is still walking the ground of earth

He’s long gone and we say funeral prayers to any deity who is willing to take his needle-punctured soul in before dinner every night

We picked at his bones and found nothing worth burning

We sang him dead bird songs and wished that he would fly away from this coffin house

We teared down his devil trap treehouse and left his ninja dreams with the carcass of his childhood

I asked mother why it was necessary to cremate his past and she asked me if I blamed him for the smoke

Dad was asleep

I sneaked into my brother’s solemn church room and bathed my tangled-earphone mind in his scent

He smells like my broken crayon that has painted pictures of a perfect family

I asked my mom why we couldn’t be a perfect family and she asked me if I want to move to somewhere without traces of his existence

Dad was asleep

I wore my best funeral smile to my best friend’s birthday party and fell from cloud nine when I realized she was looking at me with strange eyes

She asked if i was fine

I remembered my dead brother who would put on his best funeral smile and answer

Hell no

I asked my mom what hell is filled with and she pulled out a picture of my father holding a gunshot beer in his arms

My brother was at the back looking like he saw the devil

Dad was still asleep

I wonder if he’s the reason that my brother is dead

With his explosive alcoholism and moments of soberness that seems to separate our lives into two continents

He single-handedly turned our lives into midnight night thriller movies with pirate ship mood swings and documentary violence

He came with caliber bullet beer cans and left with black holes on the stone cold floor of our house

We tried so hard to patch it up with endless nights of prayer and illusion

Hoping to turn bruises into blurred memories

Broken bones into puzzle pieces

Pretend like we have never known the taste of being complete

After the last atomic battle in the frame of our house

The picture of my brother ceased to move forever

Frozen at the frame of which he sticks the venomous needle into his skeleton like arms

Hoping to turn his high dreams into reality

Seal it with his own life

I asked mother why he looks like a glitching computer screen

Like he was still trying to grasp at his childhood where alcohol is complementary to family parties and domestic violence only exists in TV

And she cried