Cool Kid

I was born the cool kid
My little brother was born deaf
In a world of clarity and vibrance
He heard the equivalent of white noise
And felt only the vibrations of the doctors headshakes
Against his newborn forehead
That didn’t stop me becoming his best friend, though
At four years old we were staging life-size renditions
Of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
I was April to his Shredder
Donatello to his Michelangelo
His perfect balance of wit and fury
That simultaneously translated for him and kicked kids asses
If they made fun of him
But by the age of five
Against all medical probability and scientific fact
The doctors found that my brother could hear
Loud noises in pin-drop patterns
Making his skin prickle and shake violently
Trying to form the ragged white gray fuzz of hearing
Into a clearer picture
That he couldn’t even understand
Let alone get used to
I, once the translator, was now the reason he couldn’t communicate
When I found he could hear I stopped speaking for him
And he, never having spoken for himself,
Now got to adjust to having no support at all
The strikingly stoic deaf boy quickly turned into the chubby slow kid
As my brother found trouble adjusting to a world
That wouldn’t slow down for him
Let alone translate
I started to get embarrassed of my little brother-
The kid who stumbled over words he couldn’t pronounce and
Heard sounds only after they bounced off the walls
Became my mark
I played him like a game of tag
So ashamed of my own blood was I
That I conquered words
Triumphed them
Used them to abuse him
To the point where even home was not safe
I turned in my big sister’s badge
For a verbal crossbow and a shot at popularity
Until I succumbed to the tragedy that my little brother and me
We
Were enemies
And if I wanted to know what family means
Then I needed to go back to translating
Instead of dictating
And it took the harsh reality of my broken brother
Clumsily signing to me, “I love you”
And that was it, you see
I was born the cool kid
But it took someone as strong as my baby brother
To make me close off the noise and just listen
Because
I was never the cool kid after all
He was