Apparitions of My Sister

When Dad crawled through the window a precariously hung fire escape, creaked an alarm allowing him to steal the only moment of you, swaddled in a murder of crows black feather, like your mother. You liberated a cacophony of caws when he bared his pinky finger; your fist a blur of plump brownish pink. Eyes that clutch, instead, blood falsehoods the glazed reflection of his face, and years later, are still blue and imperfect a white man's eyes chipped from ice punctuated with speckles of silver the lining of clouds not the veins of mud swamps, bark, or her mother’s hair. It was 1969, my father was eighteen when he left it all behind him, California, a tropical quagmire, his proposal, his daughter, her grandfather's stare more thunderous then a tribal drum, not-my- dau-ghter-, not-my-dau-ghter - white boy, not- my- dau-ghter-ever. his thin sinuous tendons straining as he danced to detain the dirty beige dodge that was heading to Denver.