It wasn’t always this way with my sister
Poetry Sunday
A sensitive soul
eyes a deep brown
adept hands roamed across
firm canvases and soft paper
light scratches of pencil sketches
revealed melancholy
of flowers and lemon trees.
But now there’s a train,
a dent within her bedroom carpet
from all that back and forth
of wandering footsteps
to a lost destination.
Her hands are now strapped in,
her arms, a straitjacket
holding her body in place
because if they didn’t,
everything would topple, break
fall
a
part
She moves with urgency
stops suddenly
lingers at invisible corners
never arriving anywhere
leaning forward on the tips of her toes
rocking to the balls of her feet.
Her pupils rattle in the whites of her eyes
and her neck cracks! Whips!
She whispers to herself
wind brushed leaves
answering to a thousand
paranoid voices in her mind.
I wish she knew
not to go
back and forth, forth and back.
I wish she knew
not to wander crossroads of stars.
I wish she knew to
look up and straight on
where my arms are out
to hold her.
