Dear Danny,
You loved me. You told me so on our last phone call, from your hospital bed in New York. I replied, I love you too, Danny.
You asked me to forgive you. I said, For what? You said that you used to resent me, your bratty baby brother, because I got more from our parents than you ever did. I forgave you. Then you died.
I said I loved you. I guess I did. We were brothers. That’s what you do.
No?
I never saw you looking like you do in this picture with Gary: happy, at ease, in a tank top.
Or is that disingenuous? Danny, I never saw you. Full stop.
I saw our mother’s words when we came to watch you star in Chicken Little. Danny is self-destructive.
I saw what made us different. You left religion. That made it all simple. That was why you were distant and awkward and sometimes even nasty.
The religious self is the true self and you were alienated from your true self. Of course you were unhappy.
I never saw you because I was busy looking away. Away from Staten Island and its grayness. Away from the unspoken rage in our house. Away from Mom, her screams of pain, her screams of anger.
Away from the letters hidden in drawers. Away from the silence.