Dirty Unchosens

Genetics and blood, sister and sister,
we did not choose one another,
I chose to open my mother's bedroom drawer
with hands as young as the birth of puberty;
and there I found it: you on the paper,
you in bold letters like chocolate stains,
sweet and dirty, I didn't know, nor did I choose,
the dirty side.

My mother's maiden name on the form
fondled my bones: I shook like the chill before sleep.
Picking up the phone like lifting a drying, dying
caterpillar off our sidewalk,
I dialed my mother, asking if I should know her,
the name on yellowed paper that I stroked with my thumb.
I did not know, nor did I choose, the thumbing between us,
it's like transparent wax on us both,
we only feel what's there,
we don't feel what's real.

And what is real?
Your punishment plan on my mother,
how you blame me for being born thirteen
years later and one day earlier?
I did not choose that, nor do I sometimes want to know
or choose
you.