The Brother in the Other Bed

my brother and i shared a room till i was twelve. two beds, a strip of carpet between them, and after lights-out we'd talk in the dark until one of us stopped answering. you never knew which sentence would be the last one. you just woke up and it was morning.

we're not anything now. not fighting. that's almost worse, there's no story to it, no big thing i could point to. we just answered slower and slower until we stopped. he liked a photo of mine in october. that's the most recent thing between us. a little heart on a picture of my dog.

i'm up at 2am in my own kitchen, different city, glass of water i didn't really want, and i caught myself doing the thing where i compose a text in my head. hey. been thinking about you. then i imagine the typing bubble on his end, the pause, and i put the phone face down.

i don't even know what his apartment looks like. i could not tell you one thing about his nights.

we used to fall asleep mid-sentence because we knew there'd be a tomorrow to finish it in. i think the sentence is just still open. i think that's all this is. nobody ended it. we just stopped answering and called it grown.