It’s so unlike you to die, especially this way,
with gaudy beads in your hair and necklace
your father gave you before he lit off for lands
unknown, dooming your mother to selective muteness
and your sister to constant roaming similar
to his, but she always returned home, bruised,
full of quenched stars but steady.

We thought you had this, with your elegant
sunglasses and stylish purses that held all
your loneliness and left room for little else
except for rain clouds you pulled out sometimes
and flung into the sky, daring the weather
to contradict you, which it would never do.
Your cold rain always left me wanting more.

I stare down at you now, laid out, strangely
still, your face a poor, stiff Halloween mask,
and I watch your mother and sister huddle
close and paint black circles on their palms,
perhaps a family ritual I never knew about
since I know so little…and thought I knew
so much about the closed-eyed girl before me.