The Spring feels different here 

      like it’s cracking beneath its own weight,  

                   so full of promise and heat.  

                               Finally.  

    We are one winter older, 

          but even that feels different, too.  

 I know you do not want  

                            the baby.  

          I know the grief of it 

                 is sleeping beneath your skin. I want  

                               to reach out to touch 

                        you and feel the sameness of our blood.  

But I reach out to your full-moon belly 

       instead and feign excitement

                                 to feel a flutter. 

Our lives have become a game 

       of midnight tag we played 

                  the liquid humid nights  

                          the summer I was eight  

                and you were ten.  

We snuck out into the moors in nightgowns, 

     wind lifting us up at the edges.  

               Do you remember? Now 

                          we live in half-shadows, 

          stumbling around in our separateness. 

We are still young and on fire. Maybe 

                        there is still time 

                                 to be different.  

I want to go back and I wonder 

                     if you do too, 

  Charlotte. We could paint  

                  over ourselves with gesso 

                            to start again. 

            Fresh. White. No longer 

                       crumbling flesh.  

Maybe then we’ll be the sisters 

                   we always should have been. 

But for now, Charlotte,  

             I’ll love you 

    with paint peeling off your skin 

                      like scales and color 

                               fading into gray.