For Byblis, Who,
Unbrothered, Wept Herself a Fountain
When in winter we
fell ill, our body-
heat was all we had
to keep warm.
We would take baths
together, gathering
lavender and jasmine
from the garden
to warm with water in
cast iron pots,
and pour the boiling
petals in the tub.
Oh, spilling
deliverance of water
over breasts ripe as
Early Girl
tomatoes sealed in
their own sweat.
I wonder what she
must have felt
when I caressed them.
Such suction of an
open nerve
rooted deep in the
rotten soils
of our neurosis, must
have surfaced
an old, deep pattern
of fraternal love.
She says we would
have been a good
mother/son or
father/daughter.
She was my sister,
not by blood but water.
