I sat on the deck

Watching afternoon merge with evening

Looking at my tablet

Listening to Pandora

Reading a book

Checking facebook

Trying not to be eaten by mosquitoes

I’d put two citronella candles out.

I looked up suddenly

The moon was a whisper

A curved wisp

Golden against slate.

I thought of you.

Earlier your picture popped up on facebook

Your twinkling eyes, challenging, giggling

Your lips curved, so ready to laugh.

I thought: what you’re missing.

They tell me that it was four times, maybe five

Does the last one count?

I didn’t know.

I guess I thought you were like me

A survivor through all life could offer.

I don’t know how our lives compared and does it matter?

The last time I saw you, I was different, you were different,

I thought, at last: sisters.

Your world spun out of control

If you weren’t so far away.

But, maybe you’d have admonished me

You had before, a drunken bitching

I shrugged it off

I shrug lots of things off until I can’t anymore.

You apologized the next day.

It meant the world.

All I ever wanted was for us to be friends, sisters.

We could giggle together.

But in a hot bath with tablets you evaporated.

 

end 8/5/2016

S. Darlington