This place is perfectly undramatic. The house
yellow-walled, clean, not too loud. He is
perfectly undramatic. His shirts, all different
shades of extra-soft Patagonia blue, tight
across his large torso. He acts, in some ways,
like a thirteen-year-old, the corgi stickers
on the back of his Nintendo Switch, the topsy
towers of Rubik’s Cubes, Lord of the Rings
books dog-eared on the shelf, the stuffed
animals lining the window sill, the neat
stacks of sleeved Yu-Gi-Oh! cards.
He is doing better, don’t ya think?
we always seem to be saying in this place.
Which is true, I guess, better than those years
of blinds shut black, piles of laundry and garbage
huddling on his floor, swallowing his items,
his world, all that shrapnel from his before life.
I write about him. I find it hard
to be with him sometimes. To be in this place.
Every room I exit he asks where I’m going, every
door I sit behind he enters at once, every second
alone he finds me to ask to play a rematch in 2K
or to watch a new episode of South Park, the plot
of which he explains in detail, like the memes
or “good boy” dog pics he paints in long-winded
word-pictures. Get the hell out of here! I told him
the other day, my finger extended toward my door,
eyes screwed up in a seven-year-old squint of hatred.
He shuffled out of the room, repeating Geez, man…
Some things are just a wall with him.
My dad said, That’s what brain damage is.
He can send me texts about Putin and the Patriots
all day but he can’t take the dog on a walk.
These days, he plays Yu-Gi-Oh! on the kitchen table
with the guys he used to play with every weekend before
he got sick. When he first had them over we talked about it
for months. They’re all in their late twenties but still around.
They play with 2009 rules. No booster packs. No special decks.
Only old cards. They eat Bojangles. They drink sprite.
The scene is perfectly undramatic. Between the cards
slapping the table, the shouts of victory, of loss, this place
is full of the night in the ICU where, somehow unseen by us,
he threw out all his precious cards in a fit of psychosis.
How he sobbed, his shattered world wrapped in deck
protectors, bound in a white trash bag full of needles,
empty tubes, to be dumped with a sigh alongside the freeway.
He is changed. This place is changed. Can I forgive
him for his pain? His play? My brother, who reaches
through the floor’s filth to find the undramatic:
the controllers, the castle-decked book covers,
the replaced cards, the old decks now new,
the brother, his brother, my brother.
Click here to read Oliver Egger on the origin of the poem.
Image: Favourite Cardgame by Timothy Tsui, licensed under CC 2.0.
- This Place - August 30, 2024