Instructions for Listening to Dead Sister

by Stephanie Heit

Assume communication.

Treat death as another state of being with its own frequency, tonal tides.

Tune into antenna hairs inside your ears and nose, back of neck, lower arms that radio information from the other side.

Bypass the brain’s rationale for sudden cold/warmth, swish of curtains, unexplained reflections.

Speak her name. Incantation to breath, to syllables alive in saliva.

Remember the silence at dinner. Period between sentences. The story of her stillbirth your mother doesn’t tell. A foot in the crack where light exits. Sensitivity to shadows and their mistranslations.

Swim in the waters where she swam, double boiler of womb and sweetwater.

Look for her translucence, a hint of form, knuckle, soft baby femur, a summary of parts.

Glimpse her between the silver flare distraction of a perch school. Ghosts of sturgeon, ancient lake monsters whose presence and absence glide her deep haunts.

Trust vibrations, extremes of sun, fluid portals, air pops, alarms. Her want a beat in your venous flow.

Pause when she asks to trade places.

Hum to her a desperate cradle-and-all lullaby.

Switch to a funereal dirge.

Sing her back to the grave.