My sister is lovely—
at age three or four
she has turned herself
into an Indian. All it
it took was a long feather
and a headband. Her whole
body is soft and smooth,
unmarked and virtually
untroubled. She looks
straight into the camera,
her warm, brown eyes
unflinching. She is an Indian.
silent and still, arms
behind her back, her chin
tucked slightly,
one eye hidden in shadows
beyond reach of the world.
Maybe in her heart she is
riding bareback across
the plains, effortless
in her desire to run.
I’ll never know. She is standing
in our bedroom in her pinafore dress
imagining she were elsewhere
and not herself and maybe
not with me, her younger,
only sister. But this is
my favorite picture of her,
black and white, utterly
serious in her intent to dream,
her gaze staring right through me.

We were primed for this,
for separation—
the empty hours of our house,
the drift of our childhood.
We kept to our corners
reared in precarious balance,
where love is the real loss.
Maybe if we had learned
to fight. Red in the face
shouting matches.