Dear brother,
You should know,
most mornings
i wake screaming to the pacific
to the bluest of silences that stand between us
they are the constellations filing the space we've left behind
we are too scared to forget
so we leave blood in our tracks
like the oceans we built with our tears
where we learned to drown and fall
today
we are too many miles broken
severed sand castles
left to crumble
by the weight of our changed world
under our wandering footsteps
during our journeys
when we left, searching for homes in all the wrong coastlines and women
did you remember to count all the sunrises you watched falling over endless horizons
without oceans
all the ones you failed to ignore
because they made you feel infinitely far away from home
did remember how you searched for a flash the first 100 nights
until you realized that miracles don’t exist for you in California
that is the weight you will carry for the rest of your life
each green flash missed a pound on your shoulders
while you played islander on a continent
breaking your back for experience
for love
for things that should always bring you home
rather than tear you apart
but they told you that you could
find yourself away from your roots
and you,
like every other good Hawaiian listened to the beautiful men and women in suits
as they proclaimed that an education would lead you somewhere enlighten
far
away from the ocean your grandmother is scattered in
away from the mountains where you learned to breathe
from the roots your hung yourself from in adolescence
and you believed them
never remembering that your blood
is gold serum
titanium
you hold koa spears in your pupils
iron riffles in your first
every muscle in your body was built to self destruct
like your skin
10 shades too light
it a world obsessed with color and definition
building your soul into contradiction
into conflict
only your tongue can shield you from the broken you have and will feel
so mold your memories into bullets
into blades
into things that can break
and sever
the you that was born
a thousand years a go
is built of worrier breaths
of all the things we take for grated
and slip under our eyelids and skin
pretending that being something at heart is ever enough
that being here
will ever be enough
that doing all that you can will ever be enough
when its not
at least not today
so instead
i carry a white flag in my veins for every time i wished i could call
for every time i checked flight costs online
filled out the UH transfer form
but didn't have the strength
because it felt too much like giving up
felt to much like failure
and shame
but this
this feels too much like sacrifice
so i give myself standing ovations for all the songs of martyrdom i sleep by
you should know
it helps to feel you over the ocean
to know that i have a brother
who skin is the same color of forgotten
whose fits
the same textured callused
the same kind of severed roots
organs
and wings
the things we are ashamed of and hide behind our jackets in closets
we all have them
but we are connected by the remains of umbilical scars
we are fighting the same wars
trying to write something beautiful enough to be remembered by
to sing our way into someone’s memory
we try to forget how our parents failed to love us the way we needed them to
we are dying to succeed in the meantime
in a world that starts burying us from first breath
we are sorcerers of the nights
calling out names of god we’ve forgotten long ago
searching for the wings
we left on shores
we shouldn't of launched from
looking for homes we'd never find
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