My Brother, the Stranger

We shared a room for sixteen years and I still don't know your favorite color. Is that strange? We knew the important things— who hit harder, who ran faster, which parent to ask for money and when. We built a language out of insults. Every terrible name was a love letter we didn't have the vocabulary for yet. I wore your clothes without asking. You ate my food without guilt. This was our economy— not fair, not equal, but understood. We don't talk much now. Not because of a fight. Not because of distance. Just because two boys became two men and men, it turns out, are terrible at picking up the phone for no reason. But if you called— and I mean really called, the kind of call that comes at 2 a.m. with a voice that doesn't sound like yours— I would drive through anything. Snow. Traffic. My own exhaustion. And you know this. And I know this about you. And maybe that's enough. Maybe brotherhood is not the conversations we have but the ones we don't need to. The door is unlocked. It has always been unlocked. I just wanted you to know that I know that you know where the key is anyway.