I like the way you wear it
Tight across your nose
Extending beneath your chin.

Here I stand
Outside your door
while on the other side you are being the teenager you are meant to be…

I feel like we are runaways,
only not,
as we are heading
toward the chaos I most wish to avoid.

Each night
as I clean up from dinner
I put away the serving which would have been yours.

I sit in the corner of the exam room watching the nurse palpate my sister’s breast. My own hand rests upon my belly feeling the steady thump of the child inside. We each have something growing inside us.

Each morning I wake to a new boy. New size, new shape, new skills. I don’t hear when they come to make the switch (although my dog has begun barking in the night). The changes are subtle. In my exhaustion I doubt myself

I never met my father’s mother. Couldn’t remember her name until I learned my older sister is her namesake.
I found her picture once wedged between the Jewish World Atlas and a biography of Moshe Dayan.

“Here: a present! For you,”she thrusts it into my hands.“See, it’s inscribed – signed by the poet himself!”
“Thanks,” I say, smile, set the book aside.
Tonight I read a poem in a magazine, and think of her.

The floor’s been swept.
The bathroom scrubbed.
The counters cleared.
He pulls out tools