Masculine Sonnet

Already this poem is turning    into    what    I    cannot    write:    my    brother
whose fingers would pet me to the kindest sleep. My brother who grew up &
I grew with him           was    there    as    he    turned    12    the    afternoon
he was so bored:     his friends    wanted    some    fun      I must have been fun
he slapped me    as  many  times  as  the  years  he’d  spent        learning to be
man.   The hard taste of his knuckles.                               I   will   never   forget
my terror plastered on his face—how                                   he feared his own
fists the most after that                    what they could do                  had    done.
I  do  not  want  to  write  about  my  brother’s  hands  which  I  love.  I  meant
to write about the ones that said I just need you to prove you don’t like men like
that or the drunk hands that squeezed a little too hard after I said stop please
or   the   ones   that   found   my   thighs   in   the   dark   of   a   cab   or   all
the  others.  I  meant  to  say  I  grew  up      watching  my  brother’s  hands
mold me into a better person. I meant even the gentlest palms have made me
kneel   & heard me             weep &                hated        it but did it anyway.