On a night like this, when I still remember how my sister looks
when she holds her hair back from her face over the toilet bowl
like a mermaid stranded on the shore, I try so hard to picture
the silver light that spills through her translucent skin
and how it burns new life into her with every ray.
The way the weight of her body seems to slowly drag her down
like an anchor far out at sea, but how that light
will always eat holes through her
until her heart is exposed
ticking, flaring like a grenade, opening and closing
a thousand times in the space of one second
like the gills of a fish that’s been drowning just inches
from the tidepool.
And I remember holding my sister against the sink
after she’d swallowed a whole bottle of pills,
bending her over the porcelain basin
again and again like a marionette dancing on the string
held by its puppeteer,
the sun soaking the window,
our two bodies rising and falling
in time with one another endlessly,
she the piston and I the lever.