I’ve known these gates since I was five. The milk-glass panes
have lined the splintering acrylic of our carmine barn house for
as long as I can remember, imprisoned my sister’s artificial
paddock, faltered like droopy kites burnt out by distance.

The stairs mark the slits of my unstained hands, slashed to dust
by my sister’s gallery of phantoms. They hawked me down Brimstone
River, then bargained me back with plastic dollars. We love you,
they rasped, as if love could be manufactured into synthetic slips.

I continue up the steps, and there stands my sister, gripping a bouquet
of white roses in one hand, the lace of a red balloon in the other.
My homecomings are never genuine, with engineered lips, chemical grins,
and counterfeit embraces; but this time I don’t have to pretend, for her
very name cranks open a reservoir in my chest. I’ve never been so afraid.

Thank you for the flowers, I say. Thank you for this blanket
of blooms—I’ll wear it in my hair when streets are empty,
when the night cloaks me in shadowy veils and shields me
from your ghost cabinet. But a frothy music escapes her
mouth, and I glance behind me, puzzling over where I went
wrong. Not flowers, she says, smiling into my collarbone. Stars.