You - 7/29/30

I always say You. Because I can’t say my sister.
We were not.

And I can’t say my friend.
We were not.

So I say You. So I say I forgot your birthday this year.

And you say nothing.
Like you have said nothing for years.

Your daughter is outside, right now.
digging through the dirt in the backyard.

And your husband has his arms around his new wife.
They are patching something out of the space you left.

This is the moment you were waiting for.
And never got to see. You have become the things you left behind now.
Nothing else.

There are things I want to tell you. No, not tell.
There are things I want to scream at you.

Until I’m hoarse and have no words left.
Until the sound has pushed you away, finally.
Until the plaster cracks and the trees die and fall like monuments to the ground.
Until your tombstone sinks in the groaning movement of this earth.
Until we are all long long gone and it is finally finally mercifully over.

I want to scream all of this. But I don’t.

Your birthday is passing us all by.
Your body so long gone. So long silent.

You show up in my dreams, all the time.
You never speak. That is a rule.

I don’t call you Sister then either. I never could.
I don’t say anything to you, anymore.