Girth
One time my brother woke up from a dream with a shout,
and I watched my Mother go to cradle him
as she had so many times before, while he cried, which he often did.
(The three of us caught in this little tableau:
Jesus and Mary, posed in a Pieta, and me standing by, like Joseph, completely baffled).
Meanwhile every one of my skin cells itched,
each nerve and muscle fisted a knotty revenge as I stood by,
because the witness's job is to look and never get touched,
because when you ask to be held it's never the same.
This time though, in the bright afternoon,
my brother's hands were clenched at the end of tree branch arms,
his legs almost seizure-stiff beneath the sheets.
He seemed a little dangerous, which made her hesitate
(after all he was thirteen).
Then: Don't touch me!, he croaked
in that awful changing voice.
I am the whole earth!
Which made me laugh, just the shock of it, and this finally woke him up
enough to turn on the waterworks
so things could proceed as they had for so many years.
At least for this one last time.
I remember to this day standing there at fifteen,
barely started on my periods, and desperate for a new metaphor.
(The eyes and ears of the world, she used to call me, as if I had no body at all).
But now I had seen the handwriting on the wall:
He would soon be falling from grace,
like the rest: our father, his legion of thugs.
And so I planned my rise:
big and round as the moon.
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