"Against Nostalgia" by Austin Kodra

When my older brother was young enough to believe in flight,he leapt from a tree in our front yard, certain he would dip lowthen swell over the sea of corn fields beyond our fence line.The superhero cape our mother sewed draped down his back,his arms plunged through the scrape of branches. Afraid he was unworthyafter the failed attempt, he wrapped himself in blanketsto hide the red lines drawn across his body. Never satisfiedwith the way history unfolded, he wrote a novel at nine,trashed it at nine. And though my memories of him this youngare borrowed, I could say it all changed after his first girlfriend diedthe passenger of a drunk swerving into a guardrail,that because there was no last-ditch swoop to save her, no plot twist,no heroics, he gave up hope that such things existed—but maybe he was simply a boy fast-tracked to manhood,learning too early what love and death can mean,those sorrows that anchor us from the beginning, which is why,now, at a bar in Boston, divorced, happy drunk with a job,he tells me he does not like nostalgia, that longing to step back,to recall the fluttering cape, that longing for takeoffand the soar over dried stalks razed to stubble, that fated drop.