you should only drink white wine Jack, that'll kill ya

1
there's a video of someone
toasting don Quixote
with a bottle of port,
I thought I knew him,
both him and the knight,
but time lost them to me,
lost them, in something,
it's something, there's
something in particular that
I'm forgetting, something
that'd clear it all up,
the confused memory,

2
last night a memory of
my younger brother staggered
through the door, drunk, vomiting,
he asked me, "please don't leave,"
a dying ember in my soul,
he slept over the toilet bowl
silently, leaning on my legs,
I realized he'd grown up and
somehow I'd missed it, those years
in between, I wonder what he sees when
he looks at me, does he know why I'm
here? Do I?

3
I couldn't take my hand off his back
like if I let go all those years would go,
like if I stayed I could have them all back,
I'd trade it all I thought, I wanted to hold him
like the little boy I'd known in our fantastic superhero
days, in our dreams and stories, but he was gone
from me, like the memory and the statue
and former selves and time,

4
I helped him to the living room,
listened to him snore into the night, he was
someone I wanted to know, it was 4 am

5
I removed myself from the cold
from the moonlight aching through the night
I removed myself from sleeplessness

6
a nightlight flickering
left at 6am
to meet the morning alone