reunion
I. Almost midnight, your sister blooms into a bruised heart, miming your father’s fists, recalling how your mother just stood there smoking. It’s not heartbreak. Not yet. Only a teenage girl after school using furniture polish as deodorant. He called me a stupid, country girl. Said they should have left me in Korea. The car straddles both lanes, you just want to get home. Do you understand why I never called. I didn’t hate you, but you understand. Do you understand? Later, you hug the hurtling bones of your sister, not because you understand, but remember the stray cat on Halloween, and how you wanted to keep him – so you put the cat in the bag, and grandmother made you throw all the candy, sticky with fur, away. Your sister took the blame, took the beating. And you placed all those years, and the people inside them, deep into the earth, and kissed each gravestone, and haven’t eaten a mary jane since. II. But it’s not heartbreak until the next day having breakfast with your mother and her nurse and there’s nothing you can say to get her to remember your name until you show the photo of your father in uniform her in her white gown and she calls his name so you call him and put her on the phone and she tells him she misses him and when is he going to come and take her away? And what can he say except I’m on my way and when she passes back the phone it’s back to soggy pancakes and stale coffee and before he hangs up your father asks: your son is going to write about us still right?