“From Afar”

by Ted Lardner

My sister’s head looks like an apple.
Her beautiful hair is streaming with blood.
Her hands are starfish, flowers gripping pavement.
Everything flows backward from her now:
color on the inside, buds sink into earth.
Her roots return the mineral sky.
Something has tipped. She is falling.
She falls a long time from the end of breathing.
She leaves her body, a traffic light stuck red.
She is not crying. She hears I swear to God
the same music when I think of her.
A horse she rides changes direction and form with every stride.
She is what stars carry home to an apple.
From their arsenic purses, the surge of her heat
settles on our shoulders. She is more than flowers.
She glides like a wave through our skins,
lighting it up from inside.