DISHES

for my brother, long gone Dirty dishes soak in the basin, my share in keeping the house. They're down to three, with two weddings done and I, the younger, turn into an only child. Outside the dogs scratch the screen door, expecting their food. The moon peeps into the kitchen window. I soap each dish and picture you sitting on the counter, by the drainer. Brown eyes, perhaps, bigger than mine, definitely perfect teeth, wearing the blue shirt I might have given you for Christmas. "Did you feed the dogs already?" I ask. "Yes," you say, "but Mumbo's missing again." "Well, why don't you go fix the gap in the fence?" "I did, but he still got out." Or something like that, some mundane conversation we would forget the next day. I rinse the dishes and they're done. There are just a few of them anyway. I think of how I had lost you before I was even born, how you had spent your birthday dead in the hospital, leaving a family hungry for memories. Isn't it strange, how we had never even met? The dogs are impatient, scratching the door harder, wanting to be fed. I wash the sound of your voice off my hands, down the drain, and look out the window, soaked in moonlight. The moon, always too far from my reach, never from my sight.

-- Conchita Cruz --