Friday poem

I'm posting an original poem most Fridays for a year. This is 27/52.

A Private History of a Public Matter

My sister and I were apart only a day;

the woman from the state promised we'd be together

when we are placed. Funny word, that.

She smelled like flowers and gave us new toys. Our few

were left to burn.

The lights and sirens were exciting.

We are happy here, in this temporary place.

The food is

overwhelming in its variety and color.

We sleep

on the cleanest sheets in the world.

The doctors have given us vitamins.

We never learned the names of all the people

at our old house. Their stays were brief though they

touched us as familiars. Our father was a ghost

in a room never open to us, our only tears pulled out by its sulfur.

We will see our mother when she is well and does not need her

strange and constant medicine. In our last days at home she wandered

through our rooms thin as vapor.

They ask us many questions,

together and apart. We learned long ago to fashion our answers

as carefully as long division.