I BROUGHT YOU A BOTTLE OF COLD DUCK
for Patricia

I brought you a bottle of cold duck
(it was all I could afford)
to celebrate your writerly success.
You said I was the only
one in the family who had
supported your writing.
Now, of course,
they all do.
We drank the duck,
and I believed in you.

Forty years ago,
standing by an atrocious
breakfast bar in a
flat behind the Little Bell
market in Noe Valley,
I handed you a scrap
of paper with a poem
about our growing-up
years, and the silences
between words.
You liked it, and said,
"that's just the way it was.
You should write
more poetry."
I said, "it isn't my thing."
I lied, of course,
wanting it to be
your thing.
And it was.

I am not a competitor
(the word comes out
in Spanish, I'm no longer
sure how to spell it
in English) and though
our names are the same,
I'd rather not
be compared to you.
But now, dear sister,
It's my thing, too.

7/20/15