90spoems/dresser

They split our dresser,
painted green –
our mother’s favorite color,
down the center
in two separate pieces.

Our lives never came
together again.
We moved upstairs,
with rooms on opposite
sides of the stairs,
yours inherited from our brother
and mine from our sister.

An antique store
down the street
has that same dresser,
in the very same shade of green.

Were I to take it home
could I re-create our lives,
a sister’s room to suit
a bookworm and a tomboy,
where I could have quiet
and you could rattle about
making noise.

If I could create a monument
to what never was
would it take away
the way things have been.

4/17/91