You Were a Girl Then Too

you were a girl then too.

I carried a red and black stuffed monkey.

You slept with cats.

I played vinyl Bee Gees crooning to save me.

You wore a headband and had a devilish little

squint in your October eyes. I wished the wind

would stop ruffling my bangs, all cowlicks. You
dared ski slopes. I was afraid I’d be thrown

over the handlebars of a purple one-speed

whose front wheel I could hardly control.

Neither of us was sure where our father

or brother were. I lay by a neighborhood pool,

teen skin turning to California brown and

remembered how we poured lemon juice
onto our dishwater hair, braiding it wet to wave.

You took to drumming circles before me, your true faithful

spirit still at home in the Rockies. My heart in the hills

of a West Coast city playing grown-up on a bar stool

slamming back inspiration.

You still sing powerfully, Bible hymns that hover

in grandmotherly shadows. When I sing, my daughter

rolls her eyes thinking me no more than a boastful boy

with variable and unstable pitch.

I still hear the tetherball on its long cord

orbiting the perfect, carefree world of our patio.

Concrete and arroyo, and a cocoa-colored poodle.

We took turns then, at winning.

(for my sister SL)

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