"My Brother Outside the House in Hell" by Dustin Pearson

Dustin Pearson is the author of A Season in Hell with Rimbaud (BOA Editions, 2022), Millennial Roost (C&R Press, 2018), and A Family Is a House (C&R Press, 2019). He makes gif poems that he posts on Facebook and Twitter and adapts them into short films that you can view on his Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy0BS0iNlLm_l1bAqqR0OBQ?view_as=subscriber

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My Brother Outside the House in Hell
 
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I fell asleep
after I told myself
I’d watch him.
What convinced him
there was relief to find
in the flames outside
when he’d seen already
what I showed him?
I woke to his smell.
The heat of the door
and his turning of its knob
burned to the bone before
he could get it open.
His flesh fell uneven
and beaded on the hardwood.
The circling flames
blew through. A plume
of hellfire brushed me back
from where I’d been standing,
but I rushed
to the one window
to track him. I watched
my brother running, the flames
in a cruel attachment
to his skin, his arms
flailing. He ran
with his mouth open,
screaming,
as everyone outside was,
and crying, though
no tears, no
intimate evidence
of conditions. The fire
took his face,
and for his black skull,
all I could think was
how we’d once been told
that deep down
the two of us were identical,
beyond the arrangement
of muscle and its appearance.
I knew the house
would never let my brother
back in, but even waking
from the dream, I knew
I wouldn’t wake
from any decision
to leave us separated,
leaving everything
in the moment
our eyes opened
to unite us, but even
migrating to the door,
I couldn’t open it.
Between burns
on my hands and anticipating
the pain of the outside,
I failed each time.
I walked back
to the window, watched
my brother disappear.
I was left alone in the house,
my brother finally
let to roam. And though
I knew under those terms
we’d never see each other again,
I knew we found a home
outside the sea
of each other.