3/12/07
The Sister
The sister is a part of me
I can open a closet and she is the box
Of scraps: ticket stubs and letters and zooming memories
(Always the clear green and blue of an idealic day
And the motions and distant events of a childhood.
What a mystery memory is).
My days are recorded in her face
The laughter echoes
Rapidly as rocks being thrown at a window
When the child looks down at a hopeful face.

The soul is quiet with the sister
It is the quiet earth throughout time,
With shatters and sand,
Eroded into a formation
Of sisterhood.

I saw the sister just recently
And we were the same reflection in the mirror
And the same pattern of rippling sand
Of crimped hair and plaid skirts
And hacking jackets.

We are quite beautiful together,
And peaceful,
The sisters.
3/13/07
Last night I had a dream that you and I were in a field at night. I was teaching you how to fly. We only could fly for a few seconds at a time and then our bodies would smoothly bounce back to the ground. I felt close to the ground but must have been high up because I gathered stars into my hands, thousands of stars like buttons or seashells or petals, do you see it? We ran quickly. And we glanced at each other with gleeful smiles as we ran. I took your hand and told you to crouch and then to jump. “You will fly”, I told you. We ran quickly through a field of green grass, green grass glowing turquoise in the night. I saw no other landscape, but I saw the green grass glowing turquoise in the night and I saw the sky that shined like the back of a whale moving through the cold ocean. But the stars shined in a true way. The stars shined like tin foil. We really did fly. In the night, in my dream, we really did fly, but it felt more like gliding. I could feel us gliding because the wind tickled my body. I showed you to crouch, to then use your legs for the muscle to push you into the sky. When we flew we were the backs of whales moving through the ocean. As we moved we hit the tin foil stars that went cling clang as they shattered against our sides. The stars dipped into my hands. They dipped like silver coins dropping into an offering plate and making that same generous noise. They held their form; they did not dissolve. The sun did not come upon us but rather we were in continual night and kept flying and landing.