Red Hill

In the dim light of Red Hill restaurant

I scratch the bug bites on my ankles

My skin indented from all the worrying I’ve done to them

I say to my brother, Isn’t it strange?

How things just don’t happen the way you think they’re going to?

And he laughs behind the candle in the mason jar

He laughs behind his glasses

Yes, dude, he says

Believe me, I know just what you mean

We aren’t old

We are young

And yet it feels like time is running out

I was supposed to be Fiona Apple by now

Wasn’t I?

He was supposed to be a famous director

But really

We are just ourselves

Roughed up a bit

Lazy patches of pain floating around us

From all the shit that’s gone down

since we moved to this desert of a city

Our father

who still works at 77,

who still goes to the office every day

Taught us to push and fight

To make something of ourselves

And the truth is we might

But there’s just as good of a chance that we won’t

So I pay my half of the check

With money I made teaching piano lessons

He slides the rest of his beer down his throat

Standing up and pulling his hoodie around his shoulders

We wander out to his car in the parking lot

To a soundtrack of cars and the sun hissing out of the sky

And the most likely outcome

Is that we will have moments of joy amid long stretches of monotony

Like everyone else

And it won’t be what we hoped

But somehow it will turn out to be exactly

what we needed