The next one is a poem--
it's a persona poem, I guess, written in the form of a letter
from--
imagine two sisters and one of them has died
and the one who alive is writing a letter to her sister
some years later, simply called "A Letter."
"It's been a long time.
I've lived at the ends of several streets, childless,
with several men, walking the shore rounds of my days
in search of you.
Some nights, you come alive, unexpected in my dreams.
Always I am saying, but you're dead.
What are you doing here?
I get so confused.
When I touch your face, cold in the cold glass, so cold
it hurts.
It's my face and my pain.
This morning, I took down the album with our photographs.
The flawed lovely Jewish face, the bosom
too large in a child's dancing costume,
and above in a childish scrawl.
Sister, I love you.
Today my husband told me I'm one year older than you.
You were my big sister.
I learned to live from you.
Our children will never meet.
A tiny me and slightly larger you hiding from their parents.
Every troubled child must hide to stay so small.
But no womb seems small enough.
I know it's silly.
I only half believe.
But when my husband's gone to work, when my work is done,
I'll mail this letter as I always
do into the earth and a different place.
Happy birthday.
It is my own death I celebrate, not yours.
Nothing is as I thought it would be.
Nothing has changed.
I can't find the right body to grow into.
Today, you live in mine."