Nine Years

I am happy here. It doesn't say so but I am sure
it was happiness. The sun shining on our white
skirts and sneakers. Two cats in tow. We always liked dogs
but the cats held secrets. I am smiling like I don't know
what is happening. Behind my head, there's a vague figure of a man
tinkering on a truck. It seems as if he's laughing. I could be wrong
but I am sure it was something like laughing.

The other girl was my sister. She is grown and married now.
She has kids of her own. Between us, two countries
emerge and dissolve. We always liked the country songs
no one sings anymore. We were pretend
Patsy Cline. I am on the phone with her. Now not then. She says
her house is on fire. My hands are made of water.
We are too far apart to combine the two.

Sister, if I knew that age nine was the end of innocence,
what would I have said to you? Could we run out of pictures,
dislodge the bodies? Like the part of us being photographed,
stripped by summer, is here or blown apart. The shoulder.
The skirts. The brown truck and pant legs panting. It connects
the dots, the bones to this, you know, and it is not the happiness
we thought. And it never will be.