In My Brother’s Bedroom

I stack dingy t-shirts beside my big brother’s bed—red, and green, and gray. No, he says, The order is wrong. Green goes on top, then gray, then red, piled next to those brown bottles of olanzapine, Xanax, morphine (bipolar, anxiety, pain). There is a certain order for his blue jeans, his socks, his size thirteen shoes—none of which have touched his bed-bound skin in months.
Through blistered light his TV blares golf, a Chevy Chase movie, then Jaws. My brother once sacked quarterbacks, guarded power forwards, hit home runs. Now rampant infections have swollen his legs into bloated tree trunks, his toes gnarled and broken like dead twigs. His flesh is pungent, red and raw. Even with a wool blanket covering his legs, the smell of my brother’s flesh seeps through.
He points just beyond his door. Something small and white lies on the floor. What is that? Right there? he says. Find out what it is. Get it for me. His static body traps a manic mind and races around the minutiae. I pick up the lint and trash it among infected gauze, sterile wipes.
He won’t let me open the blinds and let in crisp daylight. Snow whitewashes the yard outside, where we once played baseball, light sabers, tag. Like an elephant bull leading a stampede, he chased and I ran.