Could Be Worse

It's just a little bit flat, nicked butat the back, torn at a seam,not the only water ringon the tabletop. It could be worse,my mother told me forever afterI got old enough to stub my toe

in a house rigged to trip, confoundedwith petrified furniture and dimness.Her voice a stone-wet hush,much like the basementechoing radon. She confessedthe fates of my sisters before me,each death worse than the last.

I was born to doubt her but stillI pictured them all so clearly.

*

One sister ran out into the road, too shyto look both ways. Her favorite color

went dark, the summer heat rolling backlike an eye then closing. She had no name

but she wanted as I wantedto be a dancer. I'd never be a dancer.

*

Another sister, ugly by twelve,hid among grape hyacinth

with sleeping pills. I spy her dresstoo white to exist. One black shoe

a bird's shadow, the other a pothole.Long division came easy to her, remainders

beyond the frozendot. For me, thankfully, smart was enough.

*

The armless sister could be no little teapotnor catch herself falling down stairs.

*

I might've liked the bad sister mosthad she been real and survived her comeuppance.

Dwarfed by hindsight, she's a tiny abstraction on stilts.Brat decocted, she's the whole cake in one crumb.

Pitching soluble fits, prying open the nurseryto rattle a shrill window, jabbing

nostalgia blind while my cradletilled a furrow. Her locket unhinged—

she told on Mother by not resembling Fatherwho fled to Timbuktu. Mother insisted I

could never be that bad yet somedayI may, as well, find myself devoured by wolves.

*

Mother let the sickly sister rule. Perchedin her castellated disease, she wanted

bedrails to falland a Jesus-shaped nightlight. Bravery

—she reeked from it. I knowI would've hated her. Just what

flutter in the history of our mother's sufferingbegan the cellular-level whisper campaign

to saint her? She took her medicine soover time I took mine.

*

I've kept the house, Mother upstairswatching our crocodilian yard

from her window; the river,in earshot, drops to rise again—faintthe tune. Why tell my namelike clockwork if the shadowfits? I enter her room: "It's me."I could neglect her;she wouldn't remember.

A few songs on the radio awayis a brunch-prone townwhere I take my dog to meet other dogsaround the park each Sunday. Granted,some big dogs are more man than menand my dog's a sniffling teacup. Wecome home to turn on the news,hoping for disaster.