Nobody told me
a sisterhood could be the numbness of
a phantom limb, an immaterial flame,
and nobody told me the only time we'd really touch
would be your arms cradling the coarse
bundle of itchy wool blankets wrapped around
me,
a hot bulky potato that you were
afraid of dropping and
incapable of crushing.
We spent four days in the two-room apartment together
where the words kitchen and bedroom were
synonymous and I was two. Mom
cut pomegranates and we licked
the blood-red spray flecking our faces
like shrapnel
scratching “separation” on our braised skin.

Nobody warned me
about the high-pitched cacophonies,
the international calls overflowing the wastebasket,
the cards, overflowing the wastebasket, until one day
they stopped.
I looked over to glimpse the shadow of a hunched
woman sobbing before Dad shut the door,
and brought me back to Wai Po’s front door,
your door,
the one you’d step out of before our grandparents’
melatonin wore off to buy your soymilk-fried-dough-stick breakfast from
vendors screaming down the sewer streets that lined
the grocery stores, the stores hiding piles of
carrots and husk-ripped corn and signs with
big black blocks of Chinese characters screaming
TAKE ME
take me away from these flickering lights and
the old wives’ hands and the flies.

You faded away like those grocery store lights and I
stopped acknowledging your existence.
Outside, you don’t have a sister
Mom said, no one needs to know.
It's too complicated.
The alien emptiness burrowed into my mouth
and I taught myself to chew it.

I stare at the Szechuan pickle moon cake Mom
has just placed in front of me.  I split it unevenly,
three-eighths on the left, five-eighths on the right.
I close my eyes to hear the flaky
dough melting on your tongue so many phone calls ago,
sizzling to the spices on my singing taste buds, and
I remember this is your favorite pastry.
My eardrums stretch to the street outside our
subdivision and for a moment,
just a moment,
I feel your bicycle bell ring to the guard as you
pass by, and I watch your red plaid dress float into
the static of my alien heritage.
As I listen to myself chew in
the lonely kitchen, I realize
that nobody told me
you could so quickly become
my ghost.