I imagine my brother as an island: the spar of his long left arm curves to form a sheltered harbour fringed with a windbreak of lush flora, the glittering coral of his hair barely visible beneath the surface of the deep-blue ocean that breaks on the reef of his toes, batters calluses to slow erosion; his beach — shallow and pebbled — teems with nocturnal life, diffident fauna that drape themselves in camouflage night, creep about for the sustenance to hide from the day and what the day brings forth, not brave enough to run for the beautiful black soil just beyond, the scent of it a taunt to them, that moist soil which nurtures danger and ambition, shoots sturdy green upward, a competition of ruthless avarice in the way of nature, greedy for the one sun, riotous, it colonizes my brother’s legs, defers only to the lower, quieter species of greens — olive, Lincoln and polished jadeite — in the open glade rolling across my brother’s strong, sinewy belly, where larger life ventures, brave and handsome, never far from the safety of the thicket, ears up and eyes wide for the day-stalkers as they forage amid the luscious low grasses and the plain of peacock flowers which spangle the forest-framed clearing that swells and suddenly juts upward to the tree-lined ridge of his clavicle guarded by the native skulk of opportunists, the ones that watch and watch then strike and tear and spray green’s compliment, red-warm with its own life, onto broad leaves to drip and return life to the black soil much as red flesh surrenders life to the myriad insistent maws, large and small, that range the length of him, crawl the undergrowth, that close the circle even as they retreat with the sun’s wander westward to their homes in the underworld or forest den – from the outskirts of the modest, pebbled beach, to as far as the barren cliffs of his shoulders, a knot of craggy muscle incised by hard work and washed with salt sea spray; or up into the secure chaparral that claims and all but sequesters the highlands of his chin, then even higher as the rich, black soil re-asserts itself as green finally yields, and stretches upward to the extinct caldera of his open mouth transformed to a mountain pool by rainwater, an oasis to migratory seabirds, raucous and truculent, that snap and flap and vie to dominate the prize perch of promontory nose, the victor to rest from his long travels, there to drink and feed, pluck at the meat of my brother’s open, lifeless eyes sockets skyward in the moon-yearning tide; he rides among the spoiled cargo thrown overboard, an archipelago of the fortunate who will never see the lands west of the land of the dead; and I want to reach for him, go with him when the stringy-hair men take him away, up onto the deck to release him as they chatter-chatter, which isn’t real talk of real people but animal sounds, I strain against iron blacker than my skin or despair; I am blanketed by moans, bound in the dark and stink and my own filth, I struggle to call to him, to beg him wait for me, brother, wait, but my bonds are too strong and my throat too dry.