from this house.
The several blue pen notches
in the doorway; four feet,
then five,
thinly whitewashed
to grey.
My sisters find me
in the yard, furiously
photographing our memories
before fall.
They are losing me,
too.
Their sisterhood dilates beyond me,
their foreign tongue
leaves me to
my camera.
So I snap
The thinning woods,
our playhouse slowly shrinking
from the sky,
and the gardens.
They are my mother's madness sowed
into ivy terraces, soured rosebushes,
leaning willows.
I shoot Olivia's round cheeks
half-hidden by vines.
She knows she grew here, too,
she and I and the leaves, all
burst from the same
hysteria.
cb fall '07
