I’ve never noticed you from this angle before,
the way you wield your oil can as if.
I squint, type the wrong letters,
press my ears, and every

word is scrapped. Mother still pines over her
trailer court dream, hovers her body over this park
and that one, the way she did after surgery,

when she floated down the long hall, eavesdropping
the nurse asking the surgeon: What happens
when they get too much ether? The surgeon,

it doesn’t matter as long as they’re still breathing.
You, Sister, live in the terrarium of my machinations,
not womb-gone like father told me, but grown

to protector, who takes each smashed egg
slight and paves the ground I walk in bloom.