Lilla, My Sister

The morning before my sister vanished is so vivid to me: We walked a few yards from the banks of the lake where she reached her hand out to touch the inside of a beehive. She described the buzzes of life and danger rattling against her skin to me, but she did not get stung. It was a strange thing to think of sweetness without any pain pricking back for what’s been taken. I spent the rest of that lazy-rolling morning sucking honey from her fingertips as we laid out, daydreaming, on the wooden planks of the dock. She sang so quietly that I couldn’t make out the words, and she laughed and giggled gently as though drunk on wiser secrets. By the next morning, she had disappeared from that summerhouse. My parents and I woke up to just her sparse clues:

a few doors left open, her white ribbon left out in the flowerbed.

Mom spent the whole day crying at the kitchen table, and my father spent most of his time down the road using the phone at the country store. I spent my time desperately trying to retrace that enigmatic sleep-walk she took right out of our lives into her own fate. I kept my eyes shut and imagined the steps she might have taken. I carefully placed my feet on the floorboards, and then, there I was, out in the garden, but I still couldn’t find her. Some river bank, some lake bottom, maybe. Some film I’ve already seen. In some song I heard on the radio on my drive home. Maybe. Maybe she’s in one of those things.