Mother

you didn’t warn me about the boys who would take my body and claim it as theirs.

Mother, did I not hear you when you told me about boys who would put their bones on my bones and tell me that they owned me?

Mother,

I must have missed it, must have turned my ear away

the day you told me about the darkness.

Mother,

I have found it.

Mother, years ago I found it. Found that gaping hole in the air that ***** you right in, takes all your light away, takes all your good away.

I found that still sea air, the doldrums,

found that place where nothing moves,

but only shifts endlessly,

rocking back and forth, reminding you of

your wet solitude.

Mother, I know you try to shut the world out. I have seen the way your eyes glaze over

lukewarm

the stacks of magazines in the hallway,

my entire childhood in your bedroom.

I have found my dollhouses in the garage, the animal cages,

the rust.

I found the bell to my bicycle, I found the streamers.

Mother, I have watched you watch me and see something other than yourself. Mother, I know that you see me. How I watch the waves of possession overtake this house.

How money has given us too much,

how we shook our pockets to fill the void,

how we filled the barn with boxes.

Mother, I have watched you buy more boxes.

You have shut away

so much, you have heard me beg you to cut your hair,

to get rid of the dead,

to stop burying things that aren’t.

Mother, stop buying.

Mother, start seeing.

Mother, how many books can you read before you realize that you should just

write your own?

Mother, I have asked you to let me live and you have kept me close. I have asked you the questions that I already know the answers to. Mother I have watched you waste this house, cut holes in the walls and move from bed to bed like a withering animal,

I have watched you stack your clothes and still buy more,

I have watched you carve paths in the mountains of this home.

I have let you let the kitchen mold. I have watched you let the sink fill with a musk and a stench, I have let you fall in your own dust.

Mother, I am sorry.

Mother, we didn’t ask each other the questions that needed answering, we didn’t sail this wind at all. We only ever shifted, rocked and swayed in this house, let the gutters collect the trees, let the wasps inhabit the rafters. Mother, watch me build a new house. I will not let anyone in, I will not let them see how bare it gets when you have to keep moving. When you let your sails go and need to make yourself lighter and you

throw yourself out of that black hole.

Mother, watch me watch you as I try to do more than I can.

Mother, sell your books. You’ve already read them. Mother, eat the food in the kitchen. Your body is wasting away and your hair grows long. Mother,

do you see the way I have let my hair collect itself? How I have stopped cutting it? Did you hear me when I said I will comb it out and slice it off?

Mother, feel this rain. Feel how it is filling this dry earth, how it buries itself in the cracks of the dead silt, how it breathes, easy and weightless.

Feel this rain. It will swallow the ground, it will raise the sea and your sails will soak and I want to push you away. Mother,

find yourself an anchor, but don’t use it so often.

Mother, we need to start asking each other questions.

Mother, sail.

SOMETIME BEFORE

The closet was lit,
barely flickering
while
Lucy searched around the mounds
of toys
and I could only watch, she had a rotary telephone
down there, the floor would creak
and whimper in reaction to the sudden release and drop of
more toys, more action figures, more lamps left behind
and dollhouses swept aside while Lucy dug in there
reaching around those dark places spiders love to hide
when finally she turned to me and found it.

“Monopoly!”

FORTRESS

We'd set up
a tent
on the far side of her room, snow
was falling
and tapping against the windows
and her skylight
which softly came down
so we couldn't see the clouds.
Inside our fort,
the blanket tent we played Monopoly,
we played for a while and she looked so beautiful there
with her black hair
and freckles
and she looked at me while it was her turn in the game
and she smiled and I felt like I was floating off into the skylight and even further than that.

LAUGH

Lucy was laughing
at some stranger
yelling down two floors
at another stranger playing
loud music
in his apartment on the side
parallel to us. She was
laughing quite loudly
and I had to tell her
to hush or the stranger
might yell at us too.
We crawled back into
the blanket fort
and packed up monopoly
and she asked
“what do you want to do now?” or at least
that's what I think she said. I wanted
to kiss her
I wanted to
kiss her
and those
freckles
and that
laugh.

LIGHTNESS

AA
Lucy's flashlight
wouldn't work without
new batteries it kept
sputtering on and off
like the closet so she ran
downstairs to ask for new
batteries
and I laid face-up on the carpeted floor
at the skylight
and the snow which covered it,
the only sound which got louder
and louder was the ticking of a
small clock on her white stucco walls.
I felt the carpet, clung to it with my fingers
and even though her room wasn't heated,
lacked a fireplace,
and all I had on was a t shirt and jeans.
I felt like a pyre
growing and growing until
suddenly the whole place was
engulfed and my cheeks were rosy
and I closed my eyes
carefully listening to that sound
of ticking
and Lucy running back up the stairs,
it was December but it was so warm
in here. Her hair was black.
The dark wasn't all bad.

SLEEPY

“I got it working” Lucy
announced proudly with her
flashlight planted
down on the floor
and spaciously
making our fort more
alive, our shadows bold
and inescapable on the surrounding
walls. We told a few lame
improvised ghost stories
she found some of them funny
I found some of them funny
and we both got so sleepy
and we found ourselves
laying down inches apart
I told her she was pretty
and she kissed me
and she only kissed me once
but once was enough
for me back then
and everything
became fuzzy
while my heart cycloned in my chest
and I didn't feel so sleepy anymore


APRIL

Hercules was fighting the Hydra,
Lucy and I sit on her couch downstairs
it's spring and the windows are open
her mom paces outside, cigarette in hand
her dad on the computer behind us
and I wait barefoot feeling the rough
texture of her couch and
Lucy fiddles with the
VHS case of
the movie on screen
now. Her hair is black
and falling past her shoulders,
the doorbell rings
and my mom is here
bag in hand
I get up, give her a hug
and I give Lucy a hug
the door is closed
we walk together
down the stale hallway of
her apartment
we get in the car
and pull out from the parking lot
and drive away
and that was the last time I saw her
and I wonder
if Hercules ever defeated
the Hydra.

I've been thinking about our hug you left me with yesterday,
The one that convulsed my shoulder muscles and made my ribs cry just a little,
But a good cry, like the happy tears after holding a new puppy.
You said in that way,
As you have made a habit of
With sarcasm and sincerity,
"You'll always be my sweetheart",
And then you said that you won't call me your sweetheart in public.
That makes me so angry,
And you think I'm joking,
But I'm not.
Because I can't stop thinking about how those hugs and "sweethearts" are dwindling,
How each time you leave for a winter in the southern states
I cringe at the thought that I may never greet you for Easter next year.
And every time we find you asleep,
Open mouthed on the couch
We only panic for a second as to whether you will wake up this time.

You stand like a family monument,
So unique in composition,
With your structured titanium back and chiseled limestone arms that threw me playfully and carried me as your cowgirl,
And transformed our red, wooden house to sophisticated tan siding when I was too young to remember,
With your skin so dark from perma-tan I thought you were black when I was 6,
With your infinite woodworking skills and artistic envisions with architecture
That crafted dollhouses and swing sets for me at 8,
With your callused hands beyond remission and your ever bruising fingernails that paddled us down the Ausable at 13,
With your steel toed boots sewn into your feet that allowed me to dance on them till I was 15,
With your artificial heart valve and five open heart surgeries.
Once I thought it was instrumental, magical, the watch nestled under your ribs.
But now every time I get that gut squeezing hug as a goodbye I can hear that valve faintly tick,
And I pretend it's not your clock,
Trembling with each diastolic and Systolic murmur,
Gears cracking and eroding inside your kindled muscles,
Struggling to keep up with its more natural brothers inside that engulfing muscle,
That which reminds your family of
Your selfless and infinitely giving persona.
But it only reminds me that your days of rock polishing
And dentured smiles are ending rapidly.

Colors of ocean, slate, lichen,
Swirl behind fairy tale dollhouses,
Their shutters closed tightly,
Occupants fretfully dreaming.
Winds like cold-
Hearted demons roar through the trees.

Strong through the torrents,
With nimble branches,
Scalloped-trunk,
An arc of leafed limbs
Shudders with pain that
Causes it to stand *****.

A shadowy moonrise
Sliver by crescent sliver
Casts the street luminescent
And out of the storming clouds
Of Devil's Point
Falls streaked lightning.

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.