My brother and I taught ourselves to play the game
no one else would’ve shown two kids:

how to lean forward under the counter,
under our mother’s billowing apron

and imagine a darker shadow,
a more complete darkness rising

before and after the small spheres of light
we knew our lives were. And then, with a little effort,

I could, for a single breath,
almost taste it, what it would mean

to not be anywhere, to never have been.
Darkness filled the space

and left its pale fingerprint on my heart.
And the lesson of our game, one I still can’t fully grasp,

one that my brother and I would stare
into each other, trying to articulate, was this:

that it would have been okay if we’d never lived.
That we were glad, relieved, we did,

but that it would have been okay.

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