A Hippy, A Goth and A Hip-Hop Head Get into a Car…

for Chester

… or, me and my sibling can not agree on anything. My brother and sister smoke, I do not. My sister and I bleed once a month (until she stops bleeding for nine months), my brother does not. My sister and I sometimes stay up late at night and laugh ourselves dumb, tell the stories of the men in our neighborhood, stupid boys dressed in paintsplattered jeans and construction boots, my brother does not. My brother and sister leave, return, leave, return, cycle through beds/friends/men, I do not. My boyfriend picks my brother and me up from our jobs, but not my sister. My brother dislikes poetry but will read books; my sister reads my book of poems and cries when she sees one of the poems is about her. My brother calls me from the psychiatric hospital, my sister calls me from jail, I have a second brain surgery and call no one. My brother grows up painting his hair every shade of Manic Panic, my sisters favorite hair color is bleached blonde, I do not start dyeing my hair until the surgeon says I have to shave it off. Still, we all rattle loose inside, like the ugly gourd I grace my table with every Autumn, a tradition my brother and I keep but my sister does not. I make a home with a husband. My brother chases love. My sister makes a baby. We all cycle through being our mothers favorite. I know when winter has come by shaking the disgraced fruit, listen to the insides bounce against each other. The way my family does. Chester Bennington dies and we all sigh/cry/think of the one album we hold close. Different fires in our hearts keep us warm. Still, all three of us burn.

By SaraEve Fermin

Biography:

SaraEve is a performance poet and epilepsy advocate from northeast New Jersey. A 2015 Best of the Net nominee, she has performed for both local and national events, including the Epilepsy Foundation of Greater Los Angeles 2015 Care and Cure Benefit to End Epilepsy in Children and as a reader for Great Weather for MEDIA at the 2016 NYC Poetry Festival on Governors Island. She is the author of You Must Be This Tall to Ride (Swimming With Elephants Publishing) and View from the Top of the Ferris Wheel (Clare Songbirds Publishing House). She loves Instagram: @SaraEve41