My sister posts under a poem I’ve shared
about our mother,

Miss you and dreamt of you and Dad last night.

And I, not for the first time, envy my
younger sister—far more slender, blonder,

more organized and efficient than I.
But not for those reasons.

She misses our mother, the difficult one,
who was, as our father would’ve said,

a pistol right up to her end. I covet
that feeling. I’m nowhere in that

neighborhood, though I like to think
I’m walking around its periphery,

having forgiven our mother for
a lifetime of anger not infrequently

directed at me. I’d love to miss you
someday, I’d think when she was

particularly snappish. I’m still
miles away from missing her,

though I think of her often, and
our long-gone father, too,

but my sister’s heart clearly holds
a greater capacity for absolution

than mine. I don’t want to carry
a hardened heart. I like to think

that mine is soft—or softening—
more each day now that she’s gone,

that our connection with her
is only about the love that I

trust she carried for us, even if
she didn’t voice it, even if some of

her words near the end were harsh
ones. Hours later she apologized,

I remind myself, an occurrence so
rare it falls into the category of the

miraculous. I like to think I saw
softness in her dying eyes,

the ones that could no longer see us,
but were perhaps looking in the

direction where she was heading,
into the after, the place where

dreams might reach us, if only
we can hold ourselves lightly.