I couldn’t let her wet her pants in bed,
though I wished to, once, the night
she woke me every hour with the bell
she clanged to call home her goats,
only to ask if she’d eaten lunch,
or if the dead sister sang
in the kitchen, or to whisper
the pain was back but she didn’t know
where, what kind, or in which language,
and would I please give her too much morphine
so she could fall asleep the right way. After
she’s gone, we’ll loose from the last
collective knowledge of us. I remember
the story of her first banishment:
skipped a day of sixth grade
to walk the brook. Heard the thrash of God
in the elms, ran back to tell her mother.
She was never believed again.