Family. I wrote this poem when I was estranged from one of my sisters. We aren’t anymore. But the poem stands.

April 16

We don’t speak my sister and I
It is her birthday
Today will always be her birthday
Even after she is dead.
The blank interior of this innocuous
annual card stares at me
Shall I mention the elephantine silence?
Shall I slit its throat
With the perfect word or phrase
so our familial blood drains
into her backyard pool
while we guzzle gin and tonics
until we are so hot and hazy
we don’t notice the blood-stained splashes
of our drowning children.

©Lindsey Lane