I’m fooling myself thinking
I can still be friends with your brother.

We smoke joints together outside you rich aunts house
Midnight in Louisiana, drunken whispers.
Your young gay brother and his tall husband
They loved me for the parts you didn’t.
Secret cigarettes and pot smoke.
Lit with lit eyes gulping
all the good parts they could see.
I smuggled in four joints when your father died
and gave them all to your fragile brother.
Held them out, cradled in my hands
gifts for the heavily medicated.

You: alone and sober like you like it.
You hated your brother because he was just like me.