Ain't Burned All the Bright

“[A]nd my brother

won’t even look up from his video game

even when I put my hand over the screen”

The video game is a means of escape for the brother. The fact that he doesn’t even look up when the screen is blocked suggests that his refusal to look away from the screen is more about not wanting to face all the terrible things that are going on around him than an obsession with the game he is playing, showing his method of Coping With the Overwhelming State of the World.

“[He] don’t even look up

at the woman on the news saying

another woman has just been ———

now back to you, she says,

and it just goes back to the man saying

another man has been brutally ———”

By leaving out the word “killed” or “murdered” and then following each omitted word with a completely blank page, Reynolds reinforces the idea that this is the kind of thing the brother is trying to ignore by refusing to look away from his game. However, it simultaneously makes it impossible for the reader to do so by forcing them to fill in the blanks themselves.

“And then both of them are talking about

a kid my age

who couldn’t breathe”

This is where the text introduces the idea of not being able to breathe. Importantly, it is left ambiguous as to why the kid cannot breathe—the artwork on the page is also unspecific and uses imagery of a person drowning in water. This leaves the meaning open, and could just as easily reference a child dying of COVID-19 as police brutality—the two main sources of anxiety for the narrator throughout.

“[My mother] wipes weary from her eyes

still glued to the no-good

glued to the high-definition glare

of low-definition life”

The juxtaposition of high-definition glare and low-definition life draws attention to the tension that exists in modern life for many families: While things that were once considered luxury or privilege, like HD TVs, are now commonplace, this is meaningless in the face of all the parallel ways quality of life has deteriorated, and when basic human rights are frequently denied to large portions of the population.

“[People from everywhere are taking to the streets to call out for the] freedom to run

and be out of breath

and catch it again”

In the context of the ongoing protests, breath is important because George Floyd's dying words were “I can’t breathe” while a police officer knelt on his neck for over nine minutes. Here, the narrator explicitly uses breath as central to the political protests that are beginning around the country, and this framing—that some people do not have this universal basic right—emphasizes the extreme injustice of systemic racism in America.

“[T]his fight for freedom

ain’t nothing but a fist with a face

that looks like mine

swinging in the wind”

This is a direct reference to the Black Lives Matter movement, which uses a raised fist as its symbol for its fight against oppression. The image of a fist “swinging in the wind” speaks to the challenge of combating something like systemic racism. As it isn’t something that physically exists in the world, there isn’t a target to aim punches at—it is both nowhere and everywhere at the same time, which can lead to a feeling of futility.

“[S]o my sister and her friend

chitting and chatting

about asks and masks

and what to pack

to make sure

they can breathe out there”

The necessity to take to the streets in protest during the COVID-19 pandemic presents a difficult tension: As mentioned above, there is the need to fight for the right to “breathe,” but doing so runs the risk of being exposed to the COVID-19 virus in the large crowds that protests necessitate. Here, the narrator plays on that tension and the dual meaning of needing to breathe.

“[A]nd my brother

never lifts his head

from the game

while his hands jut around

moving in a panic as he fights

for an extra life.”

There's some juxtaposition between the artwork on the pages associated with these words. The brother’s videogame world appears calm, serene, and free of the anxiety and chaos of the real world; however, his movements are frantic, suggesting the calmness is a facade, and that his pursuit of “an extra life” is fundamentally fraught.

“[And I’m sitting here wondering why] […] [my father’s] cough sounds like

something is living inside him

and dying inside him

at the same time

and why it sounds like

something in him is breaking up

and breaking down

at the same time.”

The repeated use of paradoxical opposites—living and dying, breaking up and down—suggests how confounding his father’s sickness is to the narrator. It is completely unlike anything he has seen before and none of it makes sense to him, but his poetic use of language represents an attempt to render the ineffable as something more comprehensible.

“[A]nd I take a break

from them all

to check on my father.”

There is repetition of the word break preceding this quote: the mother tries not to break open, the brother tries to break records in his game, and the sister tries to break free. While each case plays on a different meaning of the word break, it is impossible to ignore the underlying idea that all of them are breaking in some way and trying their best to hold it together.

“[My father] is lying in the bed

his body an out-of-tune instrument

that somehow

only play thunder.”

This presents another instance of the narrator using his art, this time, the metaphor of his cough sounding like an out-of-tune instrument, to both comprehend and depict his father’s sickness. He is taking a thing he doesn’t understand (the cough, the sickness) and describing it in terms that do make sense to him (an out of tune instrument).

“I keep peeking

through a crack in the door

and when he sees me he smiles

because the fever

ain’t burned

all his bright up yet.”

The invocation of the book’s title suggests how important the father’s resilience is to the core of the text. Despite everything that is happening to him and around him, he is able to smile for his son because he knows that his son needs it at that moment.

“[H]e says not to worry

because he’s a fighter like my sister

and competitive like my brother

but I know he’s also a worrier like me.”

There is an inversion of the typical inheriting of traits in this quote. In reality, it is more likely that the sister and brother learned these traits from their father rather than the other way around, but the way he frames it is representative of the way he broadly decenters himself and puts his children first—something he demonstrates when he fights to suppress a cough so that he can smile at the narrator to reassure him.

“[H]e takes a sip of tea from a cup

that seems to weigh too much

and turns back to the television

that seems to say too much.”

The repetition here underscores that one of the overriding sentiments of the book is that there is just too much going on at once, speaking to the theme of Coping With the Overwhelming State of the World. The social unrest resulting from George Floyd’s murder, the COVID-19 pandemic, and global warming would be a lot to cope with individually, but together they are completely overwhelming.

“And I’m still sitting here

still sitting here

wondering why

I’m still sitting here

when all I want to do is lie down.”

Each Breath starts with this refrain, but here it has an added layer of repetition that creates an even stronger sense of timelessness and the feeling that nothing is changing. This applies to the narrator individually, as his family and home seem stuck in the same loop as the news cycle, but also to the world more broadly, where the wait for justice feels interminable and like it may never come.

“I should be standing up

looking for an oxygen mask or something

or searching for a sign

or a sigh

or something for my lungs

to l u n g e toward.”

The narrator finally accepts the necessity of action, but his wordplay signals the challenge facing him: It is very difficult to know exactly what he is looking for, and without something specific in mind, the differences between things can seem very minor (sign and sigh, and lungs and lunge are the same word but with one letter changed).

“[B]ecause what is a life

in a house underwater

and what is left when the

whole world is wheezing

and worry is worn like a knit sweater

in summer.”

Again, the narrator uses metaphor to convey how constricted and suffocated he feels. He frequently employs metaphors and images that are familiar in an effort to make something intangible, abstract, and difficult to put into words, such as the feeling of anxiety, and make it more concrete and physical.

“[A]nd it feels like

I’m the only person

who can tell

we’re all suffocating.”

The narrator’s form of coping is to sit and observe his family, and then to process it through his art. What he sees is four people who—paradoxically, given the close proximity of their confinement—are completely isolated from one another due to their differing ways of Coping With the Overwhelming State of the World. This makes the narrator feel isolated as well and gives him the impression that everyone else is ignorant of what is happening.

“[T]he news finally cut to a commercial

and I don’t remember what it was for

and I don’t remember what they were selling

(not oxygen masks!).”

The oxygen the narrator seeks cannot come from consumerism or other things that are largely meaningless. What he soon comes to realize is that the things that matter are the ones his family and his memory have imbued with meaning because of the shared experience and connection they represent.

“[My mother’s almost-laugh] was like feeding me a teaspoon

of we might should will

can be all right okay.”

At this point, the narrator is not even exactly sure what his mother’s almost-laugh has given him. The crossed-out words convey his uncertainty, and while he has elected to go with “can be” and “okay” over the other options, their inclusion helps provide a constellation of the meaning he wants to capture and some insight into his writing process.

“[A]nd this time [my brother] reacts

and puts the game down to tussle

and it feels like he might

knock the wind into me.”

Getting into a fight usually knocks the wind out of a person, rather than into them. The particular word choice emphasizes how this normally mundane experience—tussling with his brother—has become uncommon because of how world events have changed their lives. Getting back to that normalcy, even just for a couple of minutes, provides the narrator with the oxygen he is seeking and a modicum of hope that things can be okay.

“[A]nd I wonder if maybe

an oxygen mask is hiding

amongst the crumbs of memories

caught between the cushions

of this couch.”

In his search for oxygen, the narrator realizes that he can find it in the little signs of life that exist around the house, speaking to the theme of The Healing Potential of Family and Art. Things that he usually takes for granted or is annoyed by suddenly provide a reminder of the people he loves and the deep connection they have. The specific idea of crumbs of memory calls attention to the way that physical things can become imbued with meaning by the memories they come to represent.

“I still can’t help

but ask

if anyone’s seen the remote.”

Despite finding some solace through his family and art, the narrator still wants to change the news and get away from its perpetual negativity. This suggests that while he has found a way to better deal with the stress and anxiety induced by the ongoing crises, he still recognizes the need to take a break from it, and there is a balance to be found where staying informed and aware sits somewhere between obsessing (like his mother) and completely ignoring (like his brother) The Negative Effects of News Exposure.