Annie

16

To Atlantis

I mourn my past self
Butter seeped through cold pancake
To porcelain plate

The person whom once was a main ingredient
Barely passes my mind

Pedaling my bike through a graveyard of
Once was
And never weres
Seeing her as coconut lotion
Soft pink lipgloss
A ghost

My sister was named for the soft
Purple
Blossoms of
Summer

And we have fallen into forever winter
At the glimpse of pale green peering at me through lenses of earth
The eye blinks and then fades away
And a pirates patch of worms and leaves trod on ability

You cannot rekindle a fire that stood
On shaky ground giving their first speech
Knees wobbling
Hands wavering
Like an opinion or a belief
Except the flower of summer has beliefs that are stand still
At least they were
Solid as concrete
In the years of missing teeth and trick or treating

So the trees have grown like fingernails
Fast, quick, and unnoticed
And my sisterhood faded to friendship
Kinship
And now some random hug
As much obligatory as awkward
My arms don’t reach the way they did
Her arms are toned and there is soft plush where bone once was

I shouldn’t be surprised
Summer flower has grown tall like the tips of Russian sage that decorate my yard
But unlike the buds I craft into antique jars
She is foreign
Unidentifiable except for the gap in her teeth

I thought once I could only be defined within this other person
But now I look in the mirror
And kiss my reflection
For my main ingredient is pure annie
With perhaps a dash of the impossibilities created by a lost friendship
under the sea
Crushed by the waves
There is my atlantis.