What’s Eating My Sister

When we were girls our mother
sewed knots inside our throats
to muffle our cries.
We learned to communicate
in low and pained croaks
and now neither of us knows how to ask
for what we want
so we settle for what we have.

our childhood was spent hoping
our mother would leave her room
but she never did. When i cried
My sister would rub my back
and brush my hair with her small hands
gently combing the loneliness out of it

When she cried, she did so softly
and always while I slept.
Her long hair draping off the bed-
tangled with years of untreated loneliness
She’d lay there shaking, her small body
moved by the ocean of sorrow
that trapped and banged inside of her.

When the sadness of nighttime fell away
we’d fling pots at one another
and say ugly things that we picked
from our mother’s mouth.
We were storing our rage inside each other
hoping someday we’d have the courage to use it
When I try to calculate the magnitude
of my sister’s suffering, I multiply it by my own

Each time I see her she’s smaller.
And there it is, our pain,
still multiplying in her hair uncontrollably,
like cancer cells.

Grecia Espinoza is a Brooklyn based writer, emerging poet, and a voracious reader of dead authors.