Riding

When my sister visits, we walk the path    behind my apartment         Recently there has been an infestationof crows       Today they fill the sky like cutouts    of black paper         Neither she nor I can hearthe other     over the barking  dogs in the park   We keep talking   We walkuntil we can no longer feel    our legs     I prefer publictransportation     if the distance is too great     but am private  in most other ways   The wolf wants to eatthe girl   and the girl’s  grandma   His coat can’t be removed  with the ease   of the girl’shood       It took months of living in Houston  before I was willing to climbbehind a wheel     I prefer to be in motion I     prefer  the sun rising     the partof morning that is still  dark     my car the only caron the road     lone wolf     There is no stopping  every lightburns green     When I think of the riding    part of Little Red’s hood     I thinkof the wolf     Little Red    Wolf Hood     Last night I got trashedbut like a good girl   left    my car     I had in mind which man would put a roof    over my head     until I was sober enoughto take the wheel    again     Once while shoppingmy cart was stopped    with a hand     I looked like the man’s firstlove, he was sorry for staring    I have her eyes     Is she dead?I wanted to ask     There are no woods    in the suburbs of Cypress, Texas     though some      complexes boast “naturepaths”   I waketo groans of school buses     Good girl,my neighbor’s second-grade son always kneels  to pat his dog     The lab only recognizesG-bye     She does not know    when to stop, when no     means nohow to sit     girl, sit     The bitch  does not understand     what the boymeans when he pushes her  down on her haunches   Bad   There is a versionin which I worry     what will become    of my sister     We have no featuresin common     Acquaintances question    what we share     When I talk about otherthings I am really talking about    my sister     I have more selfiesof us on my phone than I have photos    of anything     Today we snapfunny faces   the crows swarm the backdrop    the sky breaks openand we pull up our hoods    The first time I saw a crowwas on my honeymoon   It was dead    I found it on the doorstepof our cabin   We had been horseback riding    in the mountains     Really I was given a pony     Tiny horse for a tiny    person, the tour guide had said as I swungmy leg around the saddle     After I saw the bird    I looked up to find a startled womanstaring back     The crow had flown    into the glass door, which my then-husband slid backDon’t kill it, I blurted   a reflex   In the jacuzzi    I drew my tired legs     to my chestThe lip of the tub   was guarded by towels   wrangled into swans  The water smelled like hay & apples    My pony had been no match for the cliffsIt could not keep up with my then-husband’s stallion    I am not a small personSometimes before bed while I rifle    through the day’s events       I consider the choicesI had   and how often I chose    wrongly       When the Uber arrives, my sister runs aheadI find red strands    in my hairbrush       a pillowcase stainedfrom the dye she uses     My sister sends me her driver’s information,    I time her journey and keep every screenshotof his license plate   Every morning, I run   hoodie drawstrings    knotting my chin   I count each breathI never tame my desire     I feed it  like a pet   Long ago, I scratched away every mirrorpressed my paws together   tongued    a tiny claw lodged   between my teeth   I was never good at seeing myselfclearly   I never know    how to stop telling myself the same story