Poetry

I look in the mirror and I finally see it
The grief on her face

Her arms wrapped around her waist
Keeping her organs from spilling and spewing out of her skin

Her cheeks wet with tears that burn like spilled
coffee and car crashes and oxygen tanks

her mouth is open in a soundless cry
that only the birds can understand
when their tune shifts to a minor key

they peck at her ears like rain drops on a roof
their wings dancing as they flutter away in fear
when her knees drop to the floor

I also understand her
I feel comfort in her grief
I reach for her, caressing a warbling mirror
This also comforts me
The bendable nature of reflection

My sister and I split the last of the anti-anxiety gummies
on the way to the airport
They taste like cheap lip gloss
And the familiar bittersweetness of endings

38 minutes to Midway

The further we drive the more I feel like a
rubber band
One end fixated at my grandma’s little house
The more distance covered only means
the harder I’ll snap back on return
The force of impact will break my bones

15 minutes to Midway

We said we’d get lunch at the airport
We both know we won’t be hungry
maybe we’ll pay $15 for a pack of crackers
My shoulder is still stiff from sharing the guest bed
I imagine my whole arm snapping off when lifting my suitcase

7 minutes to Midway

I hand my sister one of my AirPods
As she takes it I feel
The isolation that steps on my heart like a brake pedal
Ease up
Creep back

I feel her rubber band stretch too

I remember that one bedroom apartment

your mother never loved you
the way you love me.

you felt safer in the arms of a man
over twice your age at 13, a man 

who touched you in the back room
of the dance studio then made you his wife. 

I hurt because you never knew what safe was
as I lay here in my bed and think 

of all the things I wish I could say to him.
all the ways you should have been 

held, your voice like birds as you
rub my arm and sing me to sleep, God 

is so good and I cry because people
weren’t always good to you. You didn’t

know the neighbor was your sister and
you didn’t know your dad wasn’t 

your dad and I need you to know
that you are not your mother. 

railroad tracks ran
like spaced steps across
warm earth.

the distance between each
measured by held hands
and conversations.

strawberry alcohol painted
my lips a shade of red
and I learned how much he loved
his mother.

abandoned tracks towered
over a river, lifeless
the only breathing from the oaks.

wet tar covered my white shoes and turned
them black, caked by heat
as we crossed to the other side
with my eyes closed and his
wide open 

don’t look down
so I did and the tracks turned
to cliffs, and the trees to mountains
I was somewhere in between

clouds dotted the sky
like splatter paint, we were abstract
in a forest lining
water that didn’t move

birds sang as we ventured,
we were children again
running, laughing at nothing
and betting on who could find
the biggest walking stick 

it leans against the door of his
front porch now, as we sit at dusk
on the neon chairs and I think
back to the turning leaves of seabowoshi 

The new moon can’t bear
to show her face.
On the baseball field
a pair of geese preen
in peace. Coralberry blooms
around the Contemplation
Circle, gifting a quick hello
from a hummingbird among
the conifers. In my headphones:
a score composed for the planets.
My little pigeon-scattering
companion chases the breeze
as we move toward the castle.
His clover-damp mustache
and paws get lost among
tufts of untamed lawn.
How strangely lush
the months-grown grass.
How red the wet underbelly
of an acorn.
Pine-blonde tail
flexes as a squirrel
bows toward a burial.
Behind the ivy
of the stone-tucked transverse, lights
and wails move
west towards home.