Is heaven the dust-clotted velvet pillow

Where I kept my white leather diary;

Is heaven my sisters stalking and hissing like jealous cats,

My father's uncleared throat: will you pipe down, damn it

That could be heaven, the dappled spaniel curled

On a sprung cushion on our cracked kitchen floor,

That could be heaven.

Now the smaller sister's eyes fill, her dainty fingers curling

Into a glistening white snail, a fish,

Something both living and insensate

The older sister flips her hair back, then, and I stand,

Caught in a loose fold in the fabric of time,

Smelling the cut lemon she tapped behind her ears

And knees the summer the canary died,

The summer I was seventeen. That could be heaven.

And so, no longer bound by bickering, by tears,

My mother's rising laughter,

As the years fall away like dresses tried once,

And left in silken heaps all along the path

To the silvered bathroom glass, I will stand, bound

Only by their beauty, my father's shout, the homey

Smell of dog and the grip of my own flesh, wrapped tight

Around my bones again. Oh beautiful girl, I whisper.

Oh, beautiful, beautiful girl.