Aunt Dorothy, Sylvia’s maternal aunt
February 1943
My sister recovers
in my guest room
from a life that ulcerates her.
She swells acidic carrying
two children, a checkbook,
and a household on her shoulders.
Our parents help, but age
weighs them down.
Sylvia treads words to keep afloat,
all those library books, journals,
daily letters penned to her mother.
Sylvia writes more in a day
than I do in a month. My sister,
hand cradling her gut, pencil shaky
from sedation, scrawls on her stationery,
tries to keep pace with her daughter.
When Sylvia was ten, Aurelia suffered an acute gastric hemorrhage.
Aurelia kept Sylvia’s letters in packets. She always intended to give them back to her someday.