Growing Pains [ Bart Edelman ]

My parents inform me,
Your brother has growing pains.
I don’t know, really.
I’m still growing, I think.
However, I don’t suffer
From what he endures.
They say he’s depressed.
Won’t go to school.
Can’t keep a friend.
Sleeps half the day away.
Eats nothing at all.
They take him to a doctor,
But not the kind I visit.
She tries to talk with him.
Get him to open up.
Reveal something inside him,
He won’t tell anyone else.
Yet he seems, I’m afraid,
No different than last year;
Perhaps, even a bit worse.
At least that’s how I see it.
But I’m only his sister.
Hope he gets better soon.
Hate this constant dread,
Like there’s a sick fish,
Floating in the aquarium,
Just waiting to be removed.

Bart Edelman’s poetry collections include Crossing the Hackensack, Under Damaris’ Dress, The Alphabetof Love, The Gentle Man, The Last Mojito, The Geographer’s Wife, Whistling to Trick the Wind, and This Body Is Never at Rest: New and Selected Poems 1993 – 2023.  He has taught at Glendale College, where he edited Eclipse, a literary journal, and, most recently, in the MFA program at Antioch University, Los Angeles.  His work has been anthologized in textbooks published by City Lights Books, Etruscan Press, Harcourt Brace, Longman, McGraw-Hill, Prentice Hall, the University of Iowa Press, Wadsworth, and others.  He lives in Pasadena, California.