I had a sister once.
But she was born dead. Her eyes stayed shut.
Ten tiny moons set on her fingernails.
I didn’t ask my mother how it happened, just
imagined a wax-pale doll who never answered
to her name. All my life, I took the full weight
of my father’s rage. It blew up like a sudden storm.
For years this sister spoke to me, saying Everything
you have is mine, perched on the edge of my bed,
no longer larval, a grown ghost child. Her fingernails
were long and sharp. She would pinch my arm
until it bled.
*
Robbi Nester is a retired college educator who has never stopped teaching in one way or another. She is the author of 5 collections of poetry, the most recent being About to Disappear, an ekphrastic collection that will be published by Shanti Arts. She has also edited 3 anthologies and curates and hosts two monthly poetry readings on Zoom, Verse-Virtual Monthly Reading and Words With You, part of The Poetry Salon Online. Learn more about her work at http://www.robbinester.net.
Love this. Thank you. Someday I’ll write about my little brother who died at 4. And also the dead baby brother I never got to know. The father’s rage is so familiar. I know how hard this is to write about. But so well and sparingly told. Just right. Thank you.
Haunted and haunting, this poem. Thanks.
Powerful.
So moving and haunting.
Chilling as any nightmare!