Brother Stephen<\/b><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I loved the boy who tore down my treehouse,<\/p>\n
so I didn’t tell him to stop. I just climbed down<\/p>\n
and let the destruction happen because<\/p>\n
he was drunk, and I was a fatalist<\/p>\n
and believed then, as I do now<\/p>\n
that all good things must come to an end.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It wasn’t my treehouse. It belonged to the town.<\/p>\n
It belonged to the spirit of every teenager<\/p>\n
who ever needed a place in an uncut swathe of forest<\/p>\n
on unparceled land, to sit and stare quietly<\/p>\n
or hide from the crowd in greenleaf peace<\/p>\n
or let the crowd hide them.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Before, when days turned early to cold and dark<\/p>\n
we found an old fender buried in the ferns<\/p>\n
used it as a hearth, gathered sticks and paper,<\/p>\n
and built a fire in the treehouse.<\/p>\n
Floating faces in the glowing light, sparks flying to heaven<\/p>\n
and there was the Boy I Loved laughing<\/p>\n
when I griped about how my folks spent my college money.<\/p>\n
Yeah, it was kind of funny.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
He’s not the one I miss. Looking back<\/p>\n
on that crowd around the fire, I see my Brother<\/p>\n
from Another Mother, My Best Friend’s Boyfriend, he was the one<\/p>\n
who helped me out of the tree as the Boy I Loved ripped it down around me.<\/p>\n
He held out his hand, again and again, when love got drunk<\/p>\n
and ripped the world down around me.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Last time I saw him , he was in a nest of wires<\/p>\n
and bottles and tubes and machines that go \u201cping!\u201d<\/p>\n
Cancer slowed him down long enough for me to catch up to him.<\/p>\n
Surprise, A Boy I Loved had just wrecked my world, but I held out my hand this time<\/p>\n
asking him please, take it, lean on me, while it all falls down.<\/p>\n
So far, he has not taken it.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I was hoping, so hoping, like Hansel and Gretel,<\/p>\n
We could find our way out of these woods together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Brother Stephen I loved the boy who tore down my treehouse, so I didn’t tell him to stop. I just climbed down and let the destruction happen because he was drunk, and I was a fatalist and believed then, as I do now that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":188,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/188"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34413"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35658,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34413\/revisions\/35658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}