My brother has the same restlessness as me, the same slipknot shoulder blades.  He leaves when he’s not happy.  He’s the crusader who warns against perpetrators.  No one  assails my bloodline. His rage submerges inside me, the shade, the shadow.  We argue about origins;  he squints and says, “There’s a cobra sticking out of your forehead.”   This means the Devil’s hanging near me.  I say, “Perspective.  Serpent as goddess.”  My brother was born in the Year of the Snake, but we are both circular shape shifters, death and rebirth.  He says, “Evil watches you as much as good.”  Don’t you know?  Can’t you feel it?  Yes.  It is why I can’t sleep before daylight, creeping around elderly apartment, odd creaks in the ceiling.  It is why I collect amulets, a series of hexes.  We talk about our childhood, enraged and close to weeping.  “Maybe in this life I’ll figure it out,” he says, “So I won’t have to do it again.”