spread thin as pity and desert snow fall. It’s the same movie every Tuesday, sandwiched between bus rides home and mute midnights with stale poptarts and impatience that smells of mildew. When our father returns, clattering into the kitchen like an animal scared feral, our bellies will fill with something warmer, but for now all we have is eternal ice, eternal Tilda Swinton, eternal goat man, eternal knife between our teeth.

Collin can’t get enough of watching someone shed. When the goblins come on screen, he’s glue-eyed, grinding his knuckles as they peel the lion into pieces. His mane becomes hair, his body becomes door mat, his ribcage becomes savior.

The mighty are never mighty, Collin says. Even lions can be shrunk into a fist. The worn soft of our living room carpet makes me taste vomit in my mouth. I collect cold and dead like spare change. Collin nearly cries. Nearly.

The Ice Queen enters her castle. We need to touch her slick, sharp crown like children. Need her to feed us candy and handfuls of thinly chopped lies until our teeth rot. Need her to freeze us, preserve with caress, embrace, sweet hush. It doesn’t matter.

The Ice Queen is too busy with abyss, with lion-peeling and war, with collecting stones in her pocket just to feel the weight. We will never find time to spit the question sitting nauseous in our throats: when your creation bites back, does it burn too hot for touch?

It’s March and the coneflowers bloom, slipping from the soil like a lie. Collin has not yet withered into a husk. His body is only a body, flushed pink and rushing. The moon rains forgiveness-colored. I hope it’s forgiveness. Sometimes, it’s too close to dependence to tell. I want to snowglobe this moment: my brother glittering without cherry-busted knuckles, tequila-flimsy and giggling, holding happy like a newborn, the still heat of the garage, both of us throwing pocket knives into splintered wood and spare parts, stuffing ourselves with pizza rolls, our dad’s stuttering CDs, and the bubbling hope of every birthday before. Collin nuzzles his chin into my shoulder when I give him his gift: the chunk of drywall he’ll punch out a month or two later and every name he’ll call me but my own. There’s something sweet too. Some warm glimpse to sink his teeth into when he loses everything. And he will. We can all see it in his eyes, the way they burn. Collin blows out candles we’ve sunk into a rice crispy treat sticky with frosting that turns our mouths morning glory blue. The smoke makes both our eyes water.
Make a wish, he begs himself.