Siblings

Not Just the Thing, but the Idea of the Thing

It was Christmas Eve
and I just had an argument in my own house
with my second brother, who’s the one
with the wife
who tortures their child.
My brother drinks
and I can’t say anything until I drink
and the wine is...
not so good,

not just mixing with my cold blood but
the warm idea of it, wine at Christmas,
It makes me cry, him defending her
and my husband looking at me helpless
and his arms wrapped around our daughter’s
whose nose is wrinkled by our yelling and
whose eyes rise to the tree lights
while her hands wrap so tightly around his fingers

I can’t even look.
I blame my house for it,
not being big enough to accept my family;
not just for the rooms and the awful, wrong furniture
but for not having a heartbeat like a living thing.

And it wasn’t like that when I was a child;
whatever the argument,
whatever the tortures I imagined,
no matter how helpless my brothers and I felt
in the limpness of the quiet,
That house, our childhood
Swallowed us in safety like warm scotch-breath from old lips.