My Brother Was Believed Dead for Eight Years Until I Found Him Working at a 7-Eleven

his chin from the winter he fell off our neighbor’s porch railing trying to prove he could clear it in one jump.

Ivan.

My brother.

The brother whose closed casket my mother had kissed until her legs went out from under her and my uncle had to hold her up.

For a few seconds the store was painfully quiet. The drink coolers hummed. The fluorescent lights continue reading …