PERSONAL ESSAY
Two Brothers, One Phone Call
A brief note on the impossible task of changing your mind
It’s hard to find sleep in this heat. The earth stops spinning after sunset, leaving us all in a wet, sticky intermission. A numb silence filled with anxious dogs, cats fighting, and mosquitos. My insomniac neighbor chases her ghosts with a flashlight, casting shadows in my bedroom like Bogart in Dark Passage, while every creak and crack leads me closer to the morning. The wrapped sheets, the high-pitched moped, and the Town Hall’s hourly bell all do their best to forgive me for wasting yet another night.
“You can’t change.”
We spoke on the phone earlier, my brother and I, and he grabbed one of his insights and smashed it across the field as a well-known fact. It’s his favorite discipline, like philosophical shotgun practice, with sharp bullets flying in all directions, hitting random targets.
We’re from back then, with local radio for breakfast, TV for dinner, and a single landline in the hallway. We answered by number, not by name, and he was the uncrowned king of phone calls. Now, he blooms on weekends when he’s slightly drunk and widely bored, and I let him speak out of habit.
