Brother: I see some of him in me. Or maybe it's that I see me in him. I don't know. We're fucking brothers and that's what fucking happens. You drop F bombs for no effing reason.
So, there he his, sitting on the couch. Reading and laughing. "This book is pretty funny," he says, but I could have just as easily have said that. I have before, when no one around me was listening or paying attention, or could have possibly have known the premise to the novel. The plot or the characters. Certainly not the scene. So why say it? That's what we do. It helps make sense in our heads.
He's me but he's not. We go for a run and I'm in pain from the start. I haven't run like this in awhile. Instantly it's my knees. Pressure from the pavement runs up my legs to my ass -- it feels like someone is gripping my buttox, but from underneath the muscle -- Let go!. Up my spine go the jolts. It circles my skull and comes down the front. I feel it as my heart beats. There's my lungs. Under my ribcage and down my gut. After the first lap of pain I feel better and we continue running. Got to keep moving.
He laughs over there on the couch like I would. There's no need to explain what's funny. That's what's funny: it doesn't matter. What's funny to me is hearing me, my laugh coming out of him from the couch.
We make it over to Oaks Bottom. It was a workout for me just to get there. And this was to be the place I wanted to take us to run. I had to rest. Take off my top. Wipe sweat from my brow and drink a waterfountain mouthful. We begin again. Running, him behind me, pushing down the hill on the paved trail covered overhead by big trees' branches. The Oaks, I presume.
He laughs again, this time just out the nose like I would. It's not a full out cackle that's for sure. It's a release of pleasure on a much smaller scale. A satisfactory sigh. I do that, I think. That's me, too.
He passes me on the trail that has turned to a dirt path. We were to circle the pond but I'm now cramping up. I don't think I'll make it, I think as I see him -- me -- pull ahead of me -- him. I'll slow down and I can tell he could tell that I was going to do it. I let him run ahead and out of sight as I catch my breath and head back to where the trail began, where the dirt paves. He's right: he's stronger and faster, I watch.
We'll go to the store soon. Buy some food to prepare and eat together. We'll break bread, the brothers will. And we'll put into our same but different bodies the same food. We'll feast and find out what makes us so different, yet the same.
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