As strangers pass by, I tend
to look at their wrists for evidence or something,
some name, some other person, something
that tells me they feel —

once upon a time,
I only knew what I felt, what I cared for, if
it was engraved onto my skin.

I heard women talk about the stars being aligned
and in my head amalgamated the image of
internal wires
coiling around each other,
being inserted in one another so
feeling exhales on the skin, the nerves spark.

I look at you
and you seem to be in the distance somewhere,
I could separate my thumb from my index finger and pick you up
I could do the same to the trees
little branches outspread
like hummingbirds, the attractive male ones,
the very same size
I wonder why nature is so bad at bringing us together
that soulmates and sisters can be born
ten thousand miles apart
but sometimes
that is better, when the world becomes a doll
spread her creaking lungs
made of my fingernails and you are a doctor, put her in your
pocket
the dust will be her feed
I wonder if you would seem closer if I
did not wear clothes, if the landscape would open up for
my natural form
give me wings instead of claws,
I wonder if everyone would feel better
if it was okay to be naked, if everyone wanted just each other.

The last time
all 206 bones of yours were
against me, I memorized your pupils

(the size of a dot on an
i, coffee and cream
doughnut holes
letters I write you at breakfast)

so I would not forget
the next time
you had to leave my side. I just did

not think the memory
would have to last my whole life.

I am as big as my parents
were when my elder sister was born, I am also
the age my elder brother was
when I was born.

He had a black notebook and black eyes
before he was blind, yet
he already wrote about what he could not see.

I, the little sister
the uninvited birth
the blood our father slipped
between some
  younger woman's legs — my
mother, not ours.

And my elder sister
thought most about rescuing pills small as
taste buds and opaque rocks
that color-change your mind, the happy
          opals.

She told me liquid cough syrup was bad
yet she taught me to pour
water on my father's recliner, so he may think
my mom had an accident again
maybe she will stop drinking
maybe she will stop drinking
well, maybe, sister
you could stop rescuing pills
and rescue me instead.

I felt like a murderer at age nine
starting big fights about stained seats and
fake **** — my dad
had my mom against the washing machine
but any time she gave him a ****** nose, he'd
have to wash his own **** shirt.

By then,
my brother could not see at all.

One day, he stepped into his black room, locked
the door shut, tied his beard to it
and I lost all sight of him —
my belly could have split open for
seven babies
from the last time he remembered
my name.

I send my siblings birthday cards
they cannot read,
              just to keep track of my age.

It made scallops on my shirt, dried like salt
in seashells —
the final appearance of our love.
I
could have mourned it
as if it were more than the possibility of life
disguised by a million tadpoles. A whole

day, it took him to get home
it may be even more
miles than my body fluids travel in a week.
His, still on my shirt. Hits my knees

(always the knees, have built oceans on them)

He thinks he left, but it was I
who cleaned sand castles from all my crevices

he thinks he left, he
the snail
I have
caught up in years of needing to be ******.

He thought he left, but white beaches
are still in my dresser —
it is what remains.
I am so tempted to say, "your *** outlived you"
but it would not be the
first time his **** did the work for him.

He captured me
before I could become wild
and now
I am a crawl space
for the beasts I cannot be

myself.

no, I am supposed to be a snow globe
               this
                 emptiness

           is not
                        okay