Page 140 of Five Brothers
Their mother. I find her in one of the pictures. Long dark hair just like Liv, and a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. Eyes that are still beautiful, despite the dark circles.
Just like Macon’s.
I scan the photographs, noticing fewer with her in them as the kids grew up, but in each one, she’s losing more and more weight.
A tear spills down my cheek, and I walk to Army’s room, but I don’t go in. Instead, I cross the hall to Macon’s.
Leaning back into the wall next to his door, I slide to the floor and listen for him in the room where she died.
16
Dallas
The first thing I ever was in life was a poet. Since I was a kid. Before the drinking. The sex. Before I dabbled in coke, started grinding my teeth more than I smiled, and constantly began looking for the next fight.
And the next one.
And the next one.
Without ever writing a word, I was a poet. I saw beauty in the unlikely places that scared my parents. In abandoned train tracks. The foster home hells where my friends lived. In house fires, motorcycle crashes, and the destruction in the wake of a storm. In living too hard and dying too young.
In tears. In bruises. In abandonment.
I didn’t hate these things, because these things are profound. Horrible.
Tragic.
But profound.
And profound is beautiful, because it changes us.
The things I hated were the things that were lazy. Things that lacked pride. Things like … Keurigs. And punch cards and restaurants that considered potato chips an acceptable side dish.
My parents never got it. Why I wanted to peer over the edge ofmy grandpa’s grave to watch the dirt piling on top of his casket. Why I stole the car when I was twelve to drive out and meet the hurricane as it hit the coast. Why I liked smeared lipstick, skinned knees, messy morning hair, and the sting of my mouth being raw from a night of being used. It was all so beautiful.
There’s even beauty in knowing that my mother wished she never would’ve had me. Knowing a part of her thought she should’ve stopped after Iron. There’s beauty in knowing she was the beginning of Trace, Liv, and me, and we, in return, were her end.
The world is full of beautiful things, but almost no one sees it.
No one except Krisjen Conroy.
She’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever encountered. Beauty in motion. In everything she does.
She’s slow, considerate in her movements. Artful.
I love the flyaways of her ponytails and buns. Her sneakers with no socks. How kind her eyes are, and how she looks at you like you alone are precisely the person she was just waiting to see. I love how she skips the last couple of steps to a counter or the fridge, how she dances in the kitchen when she thinks she’s alone, and the way she takes more than one bite to eat a grape. She’s always appreciating the view, and I imagine she’d be as happy at a gas station as she would be a castle.
She’s in love with being alive.
And that’s also why I despise her. She can be what I can only see. She’s the breath others breathe. I’ll never be beautiful like that.
I jostle the girl in my bed. “Hey,” I bark, pulling on my jeans and ripping off the towel around my waist.
She stirs, the other one on Iron’s bed to my left moaning in her sleep.
“Get up,” I tell them.
I fasten the belt around my waist and grab the towel, rubbing it over my head to dry my hair.