My brother is a bloodstain
on the mattress our parents threw out
and the sanitation engineers refused

to set aflame and send out to sea,
like so many Vikings before him.

By the time they got the news,
he was swollen fat with rainwater
and couldn’t fit through the door.

# # #

Bailey Merlin holds an MFA in fiction from Butler University. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Streetlight Magazine, Into the Void, Crack the Spine, Not Your Mother’s Breast Milk, The Indianapolis Review, among others. She lives and writes in Boston, MA. Find more of her work at baileymerlin.com

Photo: Samuel Ramos