SISTERS

  by Cappy Love Hanson

   for Elida Katherine George


We were born twinned though
disconnected in time and place, 
from disparate wombs, by unrelated 
sires.  Phone lines and invisible 
voice waves, highways and the paths 
of planes in air braid our umbilical.
Longer-lived than the cast-off cords  
to our mothers, it always winches us
back to one another, snugs us 
together at psyche and heart.  

Divided from some larger ovum, we must 
have mumbled each other’s names 
a thousand times in sleep, stumbled 
toward our mirror images like egg 
and sperm through increasingly 
improbable tangles of years.  

Decades after chancing into each other, 
we keep weaving together what our dissimilar 
genes would disavow.  Another lost love 
for the warp.  Whole-wheat crackers 
and huckleberry tea for the weft.