sisters

pale, distracted moon,
gray as the lobe of a brain,
squinting through the shutters
through the dusty, solemn curtains,
leaning across our bedspread
and drooping its light,
turning the sheets cold
and bloodless as the bellies of reptiles.
i listen to you breathe in the darkness
and i can smell your hair
i watch your stomach rise and fall
and notice the way your eyelids crawl,
reckon, swivel –
the frantic reading of dreams,
the tealeaves of the shadows strewn.

the mushrooms turn out in their nunneries
and the night is warm
you can hear the crickets and the treefrogs outside
and i wonder how anyone can get a single minute of shuteye...
it takes me back to home
and i think about the pond at dad's
and the premature frogs
plopping in and the old toads sitting among the reeds
and mom's waterlillies in their gaunt petals,
white and clean
and slit down the back
like hospital gowns.

it is in these moments,
watching you on your back with your hands
utterly still and neatly folded and your breath so shallow,
your skin blue and chipped in the moonlight,
like heirloom china,
that i realize we have somehow stumbled into a world
of half-remembered dreams and sleeping princesses
and the throb and compression of the previous day becomes
nothing more than a bad, medicinal taste in my mouth.

i whisper
in your ear,
your eyes flicker
and the house creaks
as if someone is walking across the floorboards,
but I know
that it is just the heat from the beams
and the clapboards
departing into the night.

the nightfrogs carol,
the reeds sob,
the moon pricks our fingers,
like the sharp edges of an open tincan
and we bleed shadows
and seal our sisterhood.