dreaming of my sister colleen

when she thinks everybody’s eyes are closed
tired of focusing on the disaster she has become
when she thinks our parents are sleeping post-sex
beads of sweat clinging to their scalps
trickling down skin that heaves over gasping lungs
when she thinks I am dreaming
she slips the covers from our shared bed

but I am not asleep
I am never asleep
I do not dream and I do not have sex
instead I watch her silhouette
(a pale navy in these hours)
I watch her behind my lashes
step from her too-short pajama pants
and slip her spindly arms through the sleeves
of her too-long shirt—
VBS 2005

into her cutoffs
the tattered hem worming up her thigh
her quiet grunts as the button struggles to clasp
on she snaps a bra and a tanktop
a quick shimmy and her breasts are existent

a spritz of stolen perfume
(you tell anyone I took this, you’re wasted, you hear me?)
and she smells years older, almost legal

she twists the frayed laces of her boots around her fingers
strangling her ankles
her back tenses and I see her shoulders contract
her shoulder blades like wings struggling to stay furled
fighting against the nature of things

the window creaks against her fingers
and she brushes the paint chips onto the curtains
I hear them falling to the floor
she slides through and is gone

I used to close my eyes and pretend I was my sister
sweet Colleen how you’ve grown so
how you sparkle in the gentle sunlight
how you snicker at the lovers on the benches
how you sketch the faces of your siblings with such tenderness

sweet Colleen how you’ve changed so
how you strip in the implacable darkness
how you slink between the windowsills
how you sip that drink and seduce those men

the hours tick past my fluttering eyes
and she is brushing against me
the saliva of unshaven men greasing her neck and thighs
the coarse friction of their beards tormenting her skin
like poison ivy on my summer arms
I can hear her scratching

she slips off her clothes
soaked in alcohol and semen
and her inebriated body wobbles
as she twists to kiss me on the cheek
(never be this way) she says
she thinks I am asleep and sinks into the mattress
as if she’d been there all the time

but I am not asleep
I am never asleep
I am dreaming of the shadow she forgot
misplaced between the parties
and the stallion grip of faceless men
I am dreaming of my sister Colleen