This morning,
Annie tumbles from the car
and onto the driveway.  
I watch from behind the curtains
as Mother and Father trudge behind,
dragging duffles full of god-knows-what
(sweatshirts, I figure, and a toothbrush, and gallons and jars
of bitter white pills and injections).  
“Daddy – keys!” she cries,
and his mouth stretches, baring teeth
(he smiles, he thinks)
as he tosses a jingling cluster.  
The latch clacks, and Annie comes home.  
I hover in the kitchen –
I never know what to say.  
She spots me before even hanging up her jacket and kneels.  
“C’mere, mutt,” like she expects me to pretend
I’m happy to see her
eight pounds lighter than last Sunday.  

This afternoon,
Annie is tired.  
Only I am allowed in her room,
where the angled light shafts and the dust motes
turn the plastic hairs of her wig
into faceted filaments.  
She slides it from her skull
and drapes it on the sleeping styrofoam head on the vanity.  
She unfastens each button of her bloused, empty shirt
softly, with intermittent fabric pops,
and slips her khakis into a crumple on the floor.  
Standing illusionless before the ribbon-framed mirror,
she is a bone-pale butterfly.  
I press my nose into the back of her knee.  
There I lick a pillowed vanilla scar,
souvenir of the thunderous five-year-old day
when neither I nor training wheels could save her.  
Sighting her snow-stretched collarbone,
her eyes begin to water.  
I nuzzle her knee, again, again,
until she is persuaded to flop on the comforter.  
But not comforted.  
So I hop up and paw her down,
and I mold myself to her ribs
and she squirms, tickled,
and I squirm back,
and she laughs.