Day 264

In a dream you saw your sister
alive, talking about her travels.
She had been to the sea.  She
had been to the mountains.
She had learned to make
structures from wood, stone.
She showed you a house
she’d made:  a small house
she held in her hand:
rooms with tables, beds, all
she had made from twigs
from a tree she told you
had grown in the months
she’d been traveling. You woke
reaching for her, feeling
the warm, moist skin of her arm.
You smelled her smell you hadn’t
remembered for months.  You
could tell it was day from the way
light shone through your eyelids,
but you knew if you opened your eyes
she would stop talking
to you, you would rise
from the floor of that tent
sisterless, alone.