Amy This morning I put on the sweater you gave me--     --maroon, soft, with silver buttons-- for the first time,      and I rubbed my nose on the sleeve, and I smelled you--       Cedar, and now, baby oil, baby shampoo-- the scent of you calling from Grandma's living room, "Girls, girls, come look at this!" and me and my older sister rushing down the hall,       shoving each other, fighting to be the first to jump onto the couch beside you as you laughed      at the Blob Creature on Weird Science. It was the scent of sitting on Grandma's floor,     watching Pete's Dragon. You were on the couch again; you were trying to explain animation to me. And I watched The Wizard of Oz with you, for the first time, because Mom wouldn't let me see it--       But you would. When I was six, you told me, "If you spill nailpolish remover on unprotected skin,      another nail will grow there," and I stayed away from nailpolish remover for three years--and you Painting your fingernails pink at Grandma's dining room table, Fourteen years later, painting your toe-nails red.      I was amazed that you reached your feet            around the two children that kicked and grew                   inside you. And now you say, "All those stories I told you, about turning into a warewolf, about your body falling apart if you dug in your belly-button-- I was so mean!" But you weren't-- you were the "young, cool one" and when you told those stories, I knew you were paying attention to me, and I loved you then as much as I love you now. You heard my first word      and filled my swimming pool in the summer and took me to Aladdin and all three Care-Bear movies    and French braided my hair on Thanksgiving evenings every year-- and touched it gently, and called me Goldilocks     at a time when I had forgotten that nicknames could make me feel good. A room at the end of the hall--yours--    with purple shag carpet        and tulips sprouting on the wallpaper border and a double bed that was so large    I needed a stool to climb up. My older sister and I opened your closet,    tried on your clothes, pulled down your old dolls from the top shelves;     I rocked them and brushed their hair and wished you would come home from college--      I pictured you coming down the driveway in your light-blue car, the windows down, because the air-conditioning didn't work-- But Mom kept saying, "She can't come home.  She's too far away." But I saw you     smiling at me when I was seven years old     and lying in a hospital bed-- I saw you,     come home over all those miles-- but Mom says     You were never there.  And the doctors were afraid     because they said I was halllucinating. Still,  I saw you. And I saw you    this morning, when I rubbed my nose with your sweater. And now I'm the one in college, the one who is too far away. So now I'm afraid to ever wash this sweater-- because your scent upon it     is a better poem         than this can ever be.                  --November 29, 2001