I Forgive My Sister By Linda Bryant Davis

My sister is going blind so she built a sturdy

barn, fenced her seven acres & rescued

 

two wild horses, one white, the other

spotted brown & cornsilk.  My sister

 

is going blind. She logs shots

of her high-spirited steeds

 

on social media as they tromp

& circle her land. There are many typos

 

in her online ramblings; I struggle

to understand but my sister doesn’t give a flying

 

fuck & yes as far back as I remember her fucks

have always flown. In grade school

 

she pushed me in front of a slow-rolling

station wagon to test her limits. My sister

 

is going blind. She yanked the screen

off her bedroom window & slid into the bucket

 

seat of some boy’s Mustang. Like crazed

teenaged cheetahs they galloped the main drag, guzzled

 

stolen sangria. The younger one, I slept

through it & when she finally confessed,

 

I was covering up my streaks

of silver with L'Oreal Paris.  Why?

 

I pleadingly asked.  How could you not

tell me? she retorted. You, baby

 

sister, are a tattle tale. Still are. I deny

this; it’s one of many distorted sisterly

 

memories but it doesn’t matter because my sister

is going blind. There was the time

 

she swiped 400 bucks from me – 

she disclaims it – but whatever. My sister

 

will be blind, though she’ll be able

to see lighted outlines & shapes. She’ll recognize

 

the white mare by the pounding

of its hooves on the trampled meadow, the speckled

 

mare by the velvety feel of its snout, the high

pitch of her mid-morning whinny.

Linda Bryant Davis is a poet in Lexington, Kentucky. Occasionally she appears in literary journals. She runs and operates Owsley Fork Writers Sanctuary. She has published two chapbooks, Swing Set Confessional and Between Two Worlds, both from Act of Power Press.