When we were kids
we liked to open the plastic kitchenette,
don our aprons,
and assemble the baby dolls.

"Playing house,"
we called it.

Sometime I was the mother,
or we were both children,
and mother simply wasn't home.

We created worlds
in that corner of the basement,
loosely based on the facts of our lives.

"I'm stuck in traffic; I'll be late for dinner."
"Daddy's out of town this week."
"Your brother is home from college this weekend."

And now, we're not even friends,
first of all.
separated by some fourth grade quarrel
and 700 miles.

But "house" is no longer
the fun it used to be.
There are no aprons.
The kitchen isn't made of plastic.
The babies are human, not dolls.
I'm a sister,
not a mother,
yet I cook and clean and worry all the same.

"Playing house,"
I call it,
since I so readily assume
those roles we pretended at
so long ago.