South York

Greenville Memorial

My sister's body has abandoned her for the second time. First,

It plugged her lungs with concrete, and now it's replaced her

Blood with napalm. My mom's shoulder is coated in my sister's snowy

Nuclear vomit, my dad's hands glisten in the sterile fluorescent light.

I want to be home, watching television, reading bad paperback action

Novels - no, wait, it's 11, I want to be sleeping. I want to be far away so

My sister won't burn me up with her, I want to be deaf to the silent

Uproar of injury. A doctor walks out, face blank, chewing on his lower lip,

Leading my sister by the arm, her eyes closed - I try to imagine her groping for my hand

In the pitch of two in the afternoon, I can almost hear the taps of her cane.

Instead, he presses a prescription into my parent's hands,

Nods, it will be alright. My father lifts my sister like the fever's

Blackened her feet. We stand. I give her a hug through my dad's arms,

Her pale face melting into my left shoulder, my head on hers.