Listen:
Don’t you miss me as if I were dead?
That’s how you’d like to be loved.
To be forgotten then
remembered in a god’s red fleece
too big for either of us.
What would you do
if the world started gathering
like snow
shoveled by your own demise
and I was nowhere, sheets tucked in
(hospital corners), for
several elusive afternoons.
I have been at rest
for years myself, hearing humans
I’ve made and will make, domesticating.
Meanwhile, you’ve earned birthday tea
and my loving surveillance.
I was certain such darkness as ours
could be lit
by the right explosives
at the wrong distance.
Just before my flight back
you were passing cattails from hand
to hand to demonstrate
what sister-love could have been.