Three Sisters

Now, when people ask
I say it is just the three of us-
one sister on either side of me
and nothing else.

It is a half truth
because the entire truth is too sad
and too long a story.

So we have become three sisters
like the three fates
and I am the one who cut our brother
from our story.

It’s like Fiona spun his life out
knowing it would be brief and terrible
and Mairead measured the short distance
from breathless blue birth to delusional death
and then I was there, with sharp shears,
to cut him from this life,
this family,
this world.