Sisters 

The three of us sitting together 
in those desert landscapes-- 
the White Palace, the Checkerboard Bar-- 
saying Where you go, I will go also 
then stumbling home at midnight, 
hoarse from cigarettes, 
lit and ready to fall. 

You taught me 
to flip my hair, 
snap Mother, 
walk the yellow line 
and follow the mascara girls 
with their feathered clips 
and punch card pills. 

In a cavern of admiring lizards, 
we penciled images of leaves 
and of solitary women. 
At home we told stories 
of ghosts who preyed on teenage girls 
while Mother sat on the sofa and laughed, 
temporarily forgiving us. 

I would become you would become me, 
pattern and variation, 
now stretching into the blue distances of years: 
Where you go, I will go also. 

Marveling at the identical shapes of our hands, 
we wonder who will die first, 
surprised our lives 
now separate 
have continued on so long 
in milder climates. 

Alexis Easley

Look back there, our voices dissolving
in cardamom-spiced coffee.

This desert night is the most silent
of places—no lights, cars, no screen

doors slamming family into home.
An Egyptian hare passes quietly

in her search for food.
We lean forward, into the wave of night,

our pale faces sharpening
in moonlight, dust making light

tangible on lips, throats—
filling ears with directions that sound so

easy—a Bedouin song of memory,
a commandment that’s simple enough—

so hard now to read at home,
bathed, streetlights buzzing and the bus

passing every hour.  What was it I thought
I knew about myself back there?

I touch my empty ear shell, remnant
of a long dead sea.
 
 

Emily Wall