To My Brother, Who Left This Earth Too Soon

For my late brother, Daniel Ingram
August 24, 1993 – November 23, 2015

I yelled at you today.
No, you weren’t around to hear it.
But it didn’t matter.

I was fast asleep in my warm bed, and you came to me in a dream. Your head was no longer smashed. You were standing too, glowing like the sun. You smiled and laughed, because you didn’t know. I don’t remember what happened next.

Dreams are like that – random, fleeting.

A lot like my emotions as a teenager, dating boys who simply wanted to use me. Oh, how you hated them. You were younger than me, but that didn’t mean you didn’t feel responsible for my heart’s well-being. Like the time I screamed into a humid August night laced with gnats, upset with one of these boys. He was no man, in fact, you were more of a man than him, seven years his junior, and you called mom to come over, save my soul, scared for my sanity. That’s something mom lost the day we saw you; cold, unmoving, no longer among the living.

She hasn’t been the same since you left us behind.

I say you got lucky, went up to meet the Lord before us. Of course, sometimes that feels like a lie.

I yelled at you today.
You’re no longer around to hear it.
But I’ll just go ahead and believe you did anyway.