My sister Julie

Poem written in the air between PDX and MCI

Old and mottled, sagging
with stories, I fly east
for all the little girls dreaming
of a sister to whisper secrets to,
a giggling, non-threatening intimacy. 
My once-lively hair grown thin
and white, I fly east on behalf of
the pigtailed solitary girl I was.
Gifts come when they do, not
when we call them. Little sister,
like me irrelevant to our free-wheeling father,
like me a source of anguish to a mother
unable to cope, now when we have made
our way, independent, tough, resilient: we stumble
into each other's arms asking,
"Who are you? How did you make it here?"
"Tell me," we say, marveling, "everything."

We talked till 2 a.m.