Just Asking

Once, my sister, who still lives in the south,
taunted me with,"I plant my lettuce in February."
Here, where I was sent, she knows it's June.
Every letter is about her travels and adventures,
a new studio, her sales, house renovations.
Once, our mother gave a monetary gift.
I bought air filters, water filtration, face masks,

intravenous detox, gamma globulin injections,

pills, vitamins, and a horde of doctors.
She bought a shiny red truck for hauling yard sale
treasures, her artwork and pets.
She said, "at least we both got what we really wanted."
I'm just saying.  

A long time passed.
I got her back at her wedding, making a toast
which ended, “she had to get married right now!

No one wants to marry for the first time at forty!”
but was ashamed of myself.

Once, my brother wrote and said how tired he was

“You can't just not do it,” he said.   

In answer to a query, I wrote, yes, I was still ill,

figuring he could do the math back to '87.
I sent him some things I had actually produced:
six serious poems;  his reply didn't mention them,
though he did say that he'd met up recently with
Meg Murry of A Wrinkle in Time, who was wondering

if I still wore braces.
I replied, instructing him to say no, no braces,
but that I walk with a cane.

I'm just saying. 

My mother visited from Georgia, and I was
not well enough to tackle the vertigo-inducing
rides she boarded with my kids. 

As we strolled, she asked why I hadn't written 

a prize-winning novel like the similarly

health-challenged author of Seabiscuit.

I explained I had been raising children. 

My father demands to know nothing, having died
in '88.  But given his chemo weakness and haze,
we empathized with one another.
He once asked me to lie on the enormous bed
and just keep him company, so I did.
My mother came in and asked if we were enjoying
“some kind of invalid fest."
Neither of us had the strength to answer.
I'm just saying.