Linda Gregerson

Once, my very best darling, the sea
            and the land were all one mass

and the light was confused and hadn’t found
            a place to rest. And Emma, love,

my sister’s eyes were not yet there to hold it all
            together since she hadn’t yet been born and I

imagine though I never thought to ask them
            I believe they must have been afraid,

my own poor bid at being born so nearly having
            killed her, not my sister no our mother though

I see looking into your own two eyes that one
            as a matter of course entails the other. And

I don’t even think I can properly call it love
            what I demanded what I had in mind I

wanted something mine and what you wish for if
            the gods see fit to grant it marks the limits

of your soul. And though the years have scoured
            the worst of what made me unfit for the gift,

had even then, when you were new, improved
            the odds, if all I could think with you

in my arms was taste of bile the thousand ways
            of harming you lest the world

should do it for me what’s to become of me now
            she’s gone. My sister, love, my one

and longed for only. You said
            because it has fallen on you to be my

comfort that’s your daily job you said there’s been
            science, the people in labs have done
           
brain scans and the thing we take for this-
            I-am-about-to-do is really just the flash           
           
of the neurons in fear which has evolved to keep us
            safe. I didn’t keep her safe. I left

her to the daily harms I might have seen them
            coming some of them one of the worst

in any case and then but that was different then
            the illness that had only left me bitten

took her altogether in its jaws. I thought sometimes
            that she had turned away from me,

I am frightened for you till you do.