Emergence

I was the only one who emerged

from the crumbling cave of shrieking bats

            alive—

                        and I felt no guilt for those

trapped behind,

            only relief for myself

that I could live to walk

            Home

                barefooted

            wearing a dress of satin blue.

            The garage is dirty,

                        grainy against my heels,

            the ghosts of small dogs

                        huddled in the corner;

            I am afraid to get too close.

My little sister is at the door,

            in her long t-shirt

with a red face against brown curls.

“She’s not so sick now,”

            my mother says,

and we but away groceries

as she tells me

that throwing up wasn’t really so bad,

this time, it was only three.

There is a funeral.

            go to the church

I do not know this woman

            Yet I enter the candle-lit

            basement, grief-stricken faces

turn toward me,

            and I am afraid.

My little sister clutches at my dress—

“Look how she clings,” they say, “She

will serve her faithfully

through everything.”

“She looks just like her,” they say,

“beautiful,” and they are talking

about me.  “She is the one,

she will do

            all that the other could not,

all that her death

            left unfulfilled.”

My older sister is laughing

            and calling them crazy

because she is jealous.

And I smile,

            Step up,

feeling sick, and frail, and ugly,

while they tell me I am

            beautiful

and wait for me to fill

            with life

the ghost of a woman

            I never knew.

                        -May 8, 2001