Birthday Poem by Michelle Amerson

Doubtful there's a lighter
in the house, but maybe a match
found in a kitchen drawer
like old trick birthday candles
might suffice. After all,
I'd found the medical marijuana
and promptly bought a pipe
from the headshop--the one
we'd been warned from when
we were kids. My little brother
never went in, but I did.

He never played with fire.
On Independence Day, I'd light
his sparklers. I still don't know
what he wrote in the air. I should 
ask now that we're old, and now
that he's bleeding out. Was it 
cancer? I try not to remember.

It's like he's burning inside
and just last week we rode bikes,
and we took flashlights to bed,
and we buried our parents.
Just yesterday, he was glad
I was here in this chair because
he won't live much more.

I teach him how to smoke
the weed he hasn't touched
all this time. He won't sleep
through the night; he smolders
to the end. I tell him to inhale
and to, please, hold it in. 

photo credit: ♥KatB Photography♥ via photopin cc