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How to mourn a brother

Borrow an impossible puzzle.

Take the drawerful of gift cards you gave him for every birthday.

Google Yoga for when you feel dead inside.

Plug in his emergency flashlight outside your room.

Use the gift cards to replace your vacuum.

Read books with titles like How to walk in the dark.

Fall asleep kicking the air.

Empty the canister after every skin you shed.

Hang his keys in a baby spruce.

Forward fold. Shake your head side to side, no.

Time your breath.

Start with the sky.

Angeline Schellenberg is the author of the triple Manitoba Book Award-winning series of linked poems about autism Tell Them It Was Mozart (Brick Books, 2016), four chapbooks, and the elegy collection Fields of Light and Stone (University of Alberta Press, 2020). The Pushcart Prize nominee hosts Speaking Crow—the longest-running poetry open mic in Winnipeg, Canada.

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