lost love
My sister spent a whole life in the earth.
She was born, she died.
In between,
not one alert look, not one sentence.
She did what babies do,
she cried. But she didn’t want to be fed.
Still, my mother held her, trying to change
first fate, then history.
Something did change: when my sister died,
my mother’s heart became
very cold, very rigid,
like a tiny pendant of iron.
Then it seemed to me my sister’s body
was a magnet. I could feel it draw
my mother’s heart into the earth,
so it would grow.