MY LITTLE SISTER

My little sister, my twin,

You were beautiful they say,

perfect, but dead, still-born,

strangled by my navel string.

 

My mother grieved for you

all her life,

never knowing where you were;

perhaps a hospital incinerator,

perhaps an unmarked grave,

perhaps unacknowledged in the foot of a coffin.

They all happened back then.

We have searched but never found you.

 

You are on our parents’ headstone now,

a memory without a name,

but there, a treasured memory.

 

Me?

We have twin grandchildren, 

girl and boy like us,

now young adults.

I take such joy in them

but grieve too

for what we might have known.

 

My little sister, my twin,

You were beautiful they say,

perfect, but dead, still-born,

and all my life

I feel that I have lived for us both.