Your Organs are Everywhere

Kidneys inside the ribcage. Right ovary smaller, harder to find.
You know because she gave you a free sonogram. We don't always look
like the diagrams, she said. Organs can be anywhere.
The body's lanes are inconsistent. You were only nineteen, a small,
forward-looking liberal. Unconcerned with this
affecting your fertility. An art major in Ohio. Blond from the rural
landscape. Never touched: marijuana, a drop of booze,
pills that couldn't be chewed. I tell people it's hard to believe

we are sisters. Remember how excited I got when you wanted to buy
hard lemonade, that night we got off work early.
You changed your mind when I parked the car, not wanting
to spend my money. I tell people how smart you are,
about the cartoons you are sending The New Yorker,
with the bats that can't hear each other. How you explained to me
the way a plane takes off. Something about thrust, the wind
kicking and understanding. Your claim that you invented
the self-propelled vacuum in a fifth grade science fair.

We thought you would be a doctor, a scientist.
I pictured myself on a hospital bed, watching you
tap the skin above my liver, blood, a bone the color of time.