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"A Surgery of Sisters" by Leslie Cairns



CW: Cancer


When you wait for your estranged sister’s surgery update, on April Fool’s Day, it feels like

The way skydiving must feel (I’m too scared to fall into sunsets; I crave stability of ocean’s motions, of vertebrae under the skin): all encompassing, a void, the moment you pull the chord and come out laughing that she’s still real. You’re still here.


A cosmic joke,

Or a sunset run backwards.


We haven’t spoken since she uninvited

Me to her wedding. A union we were not. If you want to pick apart the petals at the root: I’m hard to love; she loves my mom too much.


They checked her neck and found a swell

That shouldn’t be there. I rub my neck –  my muscles – in Colorado, wondering what it feels like to be

Her. All I feel is tender skin, and pick-pocked scratch marks,

A flare. We are swans, not geese,

I swear. We want to belong together.


I’m guessing repairing, and learning if she’s okay, 

 is akin to  the distance between

 you two,

 which seems unbearably vast. Yet,  earth and sky are actually

Just a leap/faith/jump away.

Her arms could be a ripcord;

I could be the one holding the welcome sign,

When she lands in another place–


Wherever the belly

And the wings

And the humming takes her.


I could be there.




Leslie Cairns holds an MA degree in English Rhetoric and has upcoming poetry in various journals. She enjoys writing about mental health, community, and identity.

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