sister
—Patty Paine
sister
house of lightning & warped
paneling. secrets settle over us
like how snow makes odd
the shape of our bodies
luminous, the light inside you,
sister. it’s true,
there are creatures
who want to break us.
his face, a strange cemetery,
a whole thorn bush,
we can’t forget.
you left home. what is left
to long for? the robin or its song?
all bowstring, this memory, loose tether,
a crying under snow.
i’ll always remember you aglow, marvel
the unbroken shimmer of moon.
i stash your letters in the floorboards.
the weather keeps shifting, i make
a body of paint chips, I whisper us
luminous until we are song.
About
PATTY PAINE is the author of Grief & Other Animals, The Sounding Machine, and three chapbooks. Her poems, reviews, and visual works have appeared in Blackbird, Adroit, Gulf Stream, Lomography, Thrush, The South Dakota Review, and other publications. She is the founding editor of Diode Poetry Journal and Diode Editions and is Director of Liberal Arts & Sciences at VCUarts Qatar.