Book of Poetry

My Brother's Trailer

I still remember that house the way that it was,

before my brother had almost completely destroyed it with his

thunderous feet stomping on the ground, his

breath smelling-no, reeking, of alcohol.

That trailer was never fully a home to begin with,

it was always so cramped, one could never have

a moment truly to themselves,

the walls were paper thin, the rooms hardly rooms

and there was too much clutter,

newspapers were strewn on the floor, next to his

empty popcorn bags, his pens and his pencils,

which were next to the crumpled up pieces of paper

that had never stood a chance to begin with.

My brother preferred this messy, small and

desolate trailer to the outside world,

his world was inside the trailer,

his world was his video games, his movies, his music,

he would sit inside on the couch almost all day,

in nearly complete darkness, the curtains

were always closed. It was only when he got

entirely drunk that he would claim the trailer

entirely to himself, he would mark the walls with his

fist, sometimes hard enough to leave a gaping hole,

the hole that only deepened the trailer's imperfections.

My brother destroyed his trailer fully when he was

entirely shit faced, unable to listen to reason,

he was angry, angry at the rest of the family

for abandoning the trailer, mother going away,

myself going to live with grandpa, my brother did not want

us to leave him in the trailer alone. He did what

he could only do-make the trailer look even worse as he

colored the floor of the entire house with breakfast cereals,

Captain Crunch, Trix, and then he moved onto the syrup,

then the ceramic glass mugs,

the floor of the trailer was a sticky mess of

food and shards of glass, but he was nowhere near

done, he worked on the walls next, covering

the bathroom walls with shaving cream,

the other walls were left with more bruises than ever

before, he never got to finish his task

as he laid down on the bed in my room

and fell into a deep sleep.