You had no right to be the first to die. I was the older. You should not have rushed ahead of me. You knew the days were counting down when I called and you said, “I’m chilled, need my sweater, call you back.” And didn’t. I waited two more empty days, all the things I yearned to say, now regrets that nibble at my nights. In the end your daughter held the phone against your ear so I could tell you that I loved you one last time. You murmured some sound meant perhaps for love though I will never know whether in your morphine haze you even knew my voice. Silence – the final thing we share. — ANNE HOSANSKY
Anne Hosansky was a first-place winner in a New York Poetry Forum contest. Other poems have been published in Mobius, Poetica, Nine Mile, Avocet and First Literary Review East. Wearing her prose hat she’s the author of five books and dozens of short stories published internationally, as well as the blog anne-otations.me.
“Sisters” is dedicated to her late sister Sonia Boin.