sister.

today I wrote a letter to my neice, who is also my sister, and another letter to her mother, my brother’s wife, whom I also love and whom the law calls my sister. and I spoke with my very only sister on the telephone, and she was not, as sometimes she is not, a friend to my mind, but sister nonetheless. and we did not mention our mother, who cannot see us and who, while her sister lived, loathed her, not flesh, not blood, but by circumstance sister nonetheless. we spoke of our brothers, who in effect define me, as precocious one, as little sister, belonging. and then I was speaking to my therapist, who is smarter than any sister and has about a thousand sisters herself (I see them at the movie theatre with their children and outside the ice cream store downtown), and she set my head to right. I spoke to her about the friends who are not sisters and the friends who are sisters, here, and there when I wish they would be here, who mend me, who help make up my mind in various ways, though it is always work, it is always work with women.