When my sister is tickled
She curls, with her knees tucked up
And she pins her elbows to her body,
As though she is protecting her
Weakest parts from attack.
When I was younger
I was in the curl of her elbows and the tuck of her knees.
We played with ducks and dogs and dolls.
Our rooms were kingdoms.
I could hear her dreams through the wall between our beds.
We grew up and she went to school,
Equipped with a blonde head, full of learning, full of teeth.
The teachers loved her, and she let them quiz her and lecture her.
She has always known how to hold still.
When we go out I wear jeans and she wears skirts
And she knows how to cut her hair.
When she tells me it looks like I have a comb-over
I wear my hair parted in the middle for two years.
When we go out I notice how our bodies are different.
When we were younger
She held out her pristine hands and told me
That mine were *****
But her teeth were too big and her head was alien.
When we are both home we do the dishes
And we dance to music and laugh too loud like our mother taught us.
When we dance we dance like fools because grace
is not something that runs in our family.
When we dance I notice how our bodies are the same.
She grew into the alien head, cut her hair short, grew it again.
She got braces to fix the teeth.
The dentists loved her, and she let them poke her and twist her.
She has always known how to hold still.
When we were younger we had a dollhouse of toys
And a set of candles shaped like children in a Christmas choir.
The candles had painted faces and small, soft wicks, never lit.
She chose them; Two little candle girls, with aprons and dresses in starched wax.
The maids, they were called, because
To my sister
the fun in dollhouses was always in the order of things.
When we were younger I was a part of her world
And I was too young to really know what that meant.
I was the reason the maids cleaned
I knocked down kitchens
And played with hard plastic and rubber animals
And my hair was never combed
And my hands were always *****.
I was a part of her world and I didn’t know what that meant.
By the time I learned she was packing her things away
The same way the maids cleaned their dollhouse.
She took the pieces I held out of my ***** hands
And knocked down the towers I had made of her blocks.
My sister realized that the more she was played with
The more the wax would chip away
Until the face was blank and the children were grown and someone mistook her
For a candle.
So she took herself out of children’s hands, and left only the parts of herself
That couldn’t be broken.
At my grandmother’s funeral people looked at old photos of Grandma and told Sarah how much they looked alike.
They groped in the empty space for a face they missed
and felt Sarah instead.
She let them grab, let them draw lines between wide eyes and big teeth.
She has always known how to hold still.
Sarah holds things together better than most.
Everywhere she goes she cares for children,
Or people who have let their broken bits fan out across the floor,
Because she knows how to pick up their pieces
And smooth out the knots in their hair,
And clean the dirt off their hands.
I like to think she learned all that from me.
I do well in school, and get my own braces, and smile when I talk to the relatives.
I have learned how to hold still.
At my grandmother’s wake, my sister opened up her arms,
Held me close, and we cried.
And I was in the curl of her elbows and the tuck of her knees again.