Our Other Sister

  for Ellen

The cruelest thing I did to my younger sister

wasn't shooting a homemade blowdart into her knee,

where it dangled for a breathless second

 

before dropping off, but telling her we had

another, older sister who'd gone away.

What my motives were I can't recall: a whim,

 

or was it some need of mine to toy with loss,

to probe the ache of imaginary wounds?

But that first sentence was like a strand of DNA

 

that replicated itself in coiling lies

when my sister began asking her desperate questions.

I called our older sister Isabel

 

and gave her hazel eyes and long blonde hair.

I had her run away to California

where she took drugs and made hippie jewelry.

 

Before I knew it, she'd moved to Santa Fe

and opened a shop. She sent a postcard

every year or so, but she'd stopped calling.

 

I can still see my younger sister staring at me,

her eyes widening with desolation

then filling with tears. I can still remember

 

how thrilled and horrified I was

that something I'd just made up

had that kind of power, and I can still feel

 

the blowdart of remorse stabbing me in the heart

as I rushed to tell her none of it was true.

But it was too late. Our other sister

 

had already taken shape, and we could not

call her back from her life far away

or tell her how badly we missed her.

 

Jeffery Harrison, Feeding the Fire (Sarabande Books, 2001)