and rolled there as if I were on fire.

That’s when I decided to go and claim

my sister’s body.

The doctor said I had suffered a psychotic break

and in my delusional state,

it didn’t matter that she wasn’t there.

I carried a photograph of two women laughing,

one of whom was me, the other a stranger

I met on the street, but I pretended she was my sister.

It became my passport into the suffering of others.

I never took money, only sympathy.

I tried to repay everyone

by serving coffee to the firemen and police.

We shared our sorrow,

ate it like bread.

It was our defense

against the senselessness of it all.

They “wanted” to believe that I was seeking

someone I’d lost

and I absorbed their need.

I understood the power of belief and used it.

My phantom sister gave me the power to deceive.

Since I didn’t know what was real anymore,

sometimes I thought I’d died

and was a ghost come back to haunt myself.

I’d catch a glimpse of someone familiar

in the mirror before she disappeared

beneath my face.

Was I a mask the past had taken on,

or some magician’s trick gone wrong?

Maybe instead of being sawed in half,

I’d been sawed down the middle

and to the gasps of the audience

part of me had run in one direction

and part in the other.

I searched for my sister,

until at last, the looks of pity and concern

I’d learned to accept without question

made me yearn for escape,

so one day, I packed my suitcase

and faded into the landscape

where it all came back to me.

When I was twelve and my sister was ten,

she drowned in Cape Cod Bay.

At first, we swam side by side

in water so calm and blue

it was almost too beautiful.

When suddenly she sank beneath the waves,

I tried to save her, I really did,

but I couldn’t stay underwater long enough.

I could have blamed myself

for I had coaxed her

into swimming so far out when she grew tired,

we couldn’t reach shore easily,

but I didn’t, I was almost relieved.

She was my parents’ favorite

and she annoyed me endlessly.

She would have pulled me under, wouldn’t she?

I had to save myself.

At first, I didn’t even miss her,

oh it hurt, but like a blister

when you burst it,

then it heals and you forget how it felt,

but I began to dream about her.

Sometimes she cried,

but mostly she claimed she hadn’t died at all,

but was simply lost

and finally, I thought I found her

when the Twin Towers came down.

At nineteen, I dropped out of college,

left my family and roamed from city to city.

Sometimes, I took my sister’s name.

I played a game with myself.