sea glass sister

all those sea glass pendants

in the shopkeeper's window

hung from gold twine

a certain constellation

catching the sun

and diffusing her light

we stood, my sister and i,

outside and remained

hypnotized by the watery

glean of their reflections

how they penetrated

us from their distant universe

she was older than i

my sister

and the atlantic ocean

sighed in the background

the breeze a whisper on the bare

shoulders of burnt siblings

'i like the green one'

she said, pointing

i scratched my bare leg

her arm was slender and

her fingers were slim

you could snap her with a word

'i don't have a favorite'

i said, squinting

'of course not, dummy'

she said and she told

me to stop scratching

the same spot on my leg

sea glass the shapes

of an egg, an amoeba

a horse's head, a marble,

a tear drop, a fingerless

hand, a mountain, a

heart, a coin

'they must be a million

dollars,' she finally

said, about the brilliant

pendants, how they were

jewels on a string and

how we were always out of reach

and then, just then,

i saw our reflections

in the shop window

my eyes refocused, fading

from within to without

and we now stood clearly

two burnt and squinting

siblings on a white

commercial row of a street

among rows of coastal

streets and we looked like

hungry ghosts

i didn't like that

my eyes had fooled me,

sliding from pendant to

these two helpless

waifs, teacher's children

on a day's vacation to the ocean

so i closed my eyes

and opened them and the pendants

came back, sharply

dangling, motionless

behind the large glass of

the shopkeeper's window

'someday -'

she began

'yes. all of them -'

i said

'every one! yes -'

she said

'you get the green one'

i said

'i know'

she said

and we walked back together

to the sighing beach