i’m sitting here kind of watching the neon sign of the bodega across the street blink and it reminds me of how my brother walked into the driveway today all polished and shiny like a piece of sea glass that’s never seen a rough day in its life... he brought this silver thing with him that looked less like a car and more like a predator just crouched there on the oil-stained concrete of our parents' house and my dad started making this sound like a kettle whistling while my mom just sort of touched the hood like she was afraid it would bite her or maybe she was just realizing how much of her life she’d spent in a rusted out sedan that smelled like wet dog and old french fries... i guess i was supposed to feel something like joy but mostly it just felt like the air in the room got very thin and very expensive all at once and i couldn't quite catch my breath under the weight of it. he’s younger than me by five years but he carries himself with this surgical precision i guess you’d call it like every movement is calculated to minimize bleeding and maximise the AESTHETIC of his success... we grew up in the same house with the same peeling wallpaper but somehow he came out looking like marble and i came out looking like the plaster underneath that’s sort of crumbling at the edges from too much damp... he handed my dad the keys and they were heavy and silver and they didn't have a keychain with a bottle opener or a grocery store rewards card they just looked like power... and i’m standing there in my work khakis that still smell like the backroom of the shop and the stale scent of pallet wrap and floor wax thinking about how many shifts i’d have to pull just to pay for the insurance on that thing let alone the sticker price. it’s sort of funny in a grim way how life works because i’m the one who stayed close and i’m the one who comes over to fix the leaky faucet or lug the heavy groceries up the stairs while he’s off cutting people open and sewing them back together in some high-rise cathedral of medicine... i spend my days managing a team of kids who don’t give a damn about inventory or customer satisfaction and my soul feels like a used sponge that’s been left at the bottom of a sink for too long—just heavy and damp and slightly sour... i guess i thought being the steady one mattered but when that silver car rolled up it was like all those years of showing up just evaporated into the exhaust fumes and i was just the spectator at the coronation of the golden child.