Today Is a Photograph

All the children
my sister has left

kneeling in a garden.
It is an orange spider

crushed between their teeth,
becoming heirs

to each other’s hungers.
We know better than to have

daughters now.
Today is not a crown

it is a forceps, the sunken
flower of my sister's waist.

Today it only took a minute
to discover who among us was cruel.

Before her morning salatr, my sister digs
her feet in a lake. By winter,

blue throated robins
will have gathered.

Today is one place to bury a child
and what you say after.

Or else today is just domestic work.
How her bare feet touched mine,

the fern finding its way
back to life. Today is the scar I put on

her thigh. God, a man
who will always be hungry.

Kiss her, and the throne looks
empty. Today my sister

is a door put on backwards.
But maybe, snow finds the cypress.

Or the cancer
comes back.

Or maybe today is just another day
between the small

humiliations.
So many times

I have pulled my sister's bones apart.
Took the femur

from the tibia. I buried my sister
in the backyard; can't tell you

how long I have knelt
to this regret.

Today my sister’s teeth are slats
on the broken bridge between us.

Doing dishes we bare our elbows
one sleeve at a time

and today is her husband’s
stain on the bed sheets,

whatever name dark has learned to call itself.
We were like our parents today,

having our enemies name
our children.