I remember the day
I pushed you into the snow bank.
All the frustration, friction, horror
Of a pubescent child’s life
Gathering like light in my hands,
And I pushed you.
All our classmates gathered around
The fence by the snow where you fell
And looked on through the light flakes
That fell around us like drifting dust.

I’ve always been ashamed of that moment,
Looked back with a burning, grinding pain in my heart,
But was glad that time kept spinning.
We were like two fingers, separated at the tips,
But at our roots, we were always joined.

My only sister died
Before I was even born.
But then, there was always
That awkward girl with the moon-round glasses,
The brown hair that hung long
Like a cape.
Like me, she grew taller, smoother;
She became beautiful,
Her skin cleared of flecks and age refined her,
An artist’s hands refining wet clay before it dries.

While that snow day I can’t forget,
An isolated Polaroid hanging dry in my mind,
I feel the great abstract warmth
Of summers of laughing
Surround me sweetly like a perfume:
Barely visible, diffuse,
But so real and so present.
I remember the night
I fell asleep talking to you,
The whispers we shared,
Exchanging secrets sneakily like stolen goods,
Things no one knew we even had.

Remember our daring and detached, unfounded dreams,
Our progression from children to adults?
The questions we asked,
The summers we spent walking
Down to the same 7-11 every week,
Always leaving with that same soda and slurpee,
Asking each other questions
We were too ashamed to ask other people?

I try to pinpoint a smile,
The color of your eyes in that afternoon sunlight,
Standing outside the brown brick post office,
Laughing about nothing—
Like trying to pinch the wind.