The girls sit on the steps of the verandah and braid

each other's hair. Their small hands weave through

strands of hair; each knot is a memory tugged tight 

and buried deep in the scalp. The wind smells of salt, 

of skins bruised too young, but no one notices it.

Sunlight floods the red floor golden. 

I think of my sister. I see her standing beside me,

in her flimsy white dress. Her darkened nipples

cut through the fabric; innocence stripped away,

peeled off in layers the way skin burns under the sun. 

The braids twist, tighter and tighter, a string of

words that die in their throats, the ache of being

good girls when no one's looking, the screams

swallowed, the warmth lost in last night's dinner.

One girl's mouth moves, another blinks away.

Father's shoes by the door, Mother's perfume 

burning into her throat like last night's cough syrup.

The tang of too much time alone in the bathroom,

the creak of the floor even when no one's walking.

The sun thickens their shadows until they are nothing

but a smear of childhood stretching across the dirt.

I think of my father,

how we never exchanged I love you's,

how he died without knowing that 

I loved him more than my mother. 

The distance grows, the plates in the sink

are left undone, the bricks are built,

our house is covered in moss and ivy;

I bury love with a bunch of chrysanthemums

in the far side of our unused garden last winter.