I listen very hard and press my hand against the wall
I believe this sentence is one of the most heartfelt sentences in this entire narrative. At the beginning, it was the thin wall that the author would hear the music of her brother through. Now, with her brother missing, she is listening to music while touching the wall.
The song says there are two paths, but it’s never too late to change the road you’re on. So maybe when our separate paths lead us out of childhood, our roads will converge, and we’ll be together again.
This metaphor allows the reader to visualize the separation of the siblings and how they can come back together eventually.
I picture forests echoing with laughter and shadows taller than souls.
This sentence is using imagery to describe what the author is imagining while listening to the music. When the author says "shadows taller than souls" I believe this refers to the tall trees in a forest casting their shadows on the ground.
There’s Metallica and W.A.S.P. and Queen and Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin; I put on the Led Zeppelin and play “Stairway to Heaven” over and over. I lie on my bed and close my eyes and think if I keep listening to this one song at some point he’ll be listening too.
This description allows the reader to picture a heart felt moment between the author, music, and the long gone brother. Although the siblings are separated, music is still keeping them connected in a sense.
and the window is shattered and he’s long gone. The floor is littered with broken records. A policeman picks up one of the smooth vinyl shards and rubs his thumb across the grooves. He glances at the album covers strewn across the bed and chooses one, flips it open, shakes his head. There’s this smile on his face
This displays the condition that the brother left his home in. While searching for some sort of evidence, the reader is left with an eerie feeling as the police officer smiles while looking at album covers. Why is the police officer smiling, especially when the brother left home?
read about death and God and the devil and war and sex and hate and love. I know he’s sharing things with me that he can’t say out loud. He talks less than he used to.
The siblings are reading about topics that are very different from each other, total opposites. This is the channel in which the author's brother communicates with the author through since the brother doesn't talk much.
the tinsel rain of cymbals and urgency of words. The music is hard and heavy with lyrics like poetry; he calls it heavy metal
This description of the music his brother is listening to (heavy metal) gives the reader a more vivid picture rather compared to if the author said that his brother was listening to heavy metal with no description.