You were a early spring we did not rejoice in.

You fumble through memory —

the "squeak" in the deep blue bookcase. Lustfully,
your ancient clay carnations. And the amphorae
embracing the chestnut hair, the slitted eye, roses braided in plaits—
little fairy who enchanted us with your bold, barefoot walk
and your inverted crescent smile;
the aorta sought the murmur
the ear upon the nourishing nipple,
misty leaving the eye’s lower lid—
your galloping, ethereal silhouette
departing on this night of the spirits.

At seven, the breeze filled with the scent of your blue shirt,
climbing upon the empty bed—
I, two Junes old, your eyes—
trod upon the unconfessed Erinys of after years,
as if mother brought you to Aulis,
the new-sprung blossom,
to be betrothed to the Hellenes,
for the sea to sneeze,
of a barque, at afternoon, countless I saw Acheans

at Kourion coming ashore.
And I searched their pockets for a charm, or message, or vanishing caress,

sent for me
holding as goodbye the shirt as a wind-filled sail
you left me,
when wearing the veil, of the sun’s midnight transfiguration,
and the scarlet call of the seven angels.
You ascended.

I did not weep for you, my sister Iphigenia, when I should have—

When I should have. A child,
tracing my flat atlas, I remained
on an unruly papyrus,
stubbornly warring the yellow and the blue,
my two Junes,
toiling to snatch with my right hand the sound of the butterfly.
But you, who kneaded in my hands the first touch of tenderness—the bread—
you ascended
leaping over of the long uphill horizon’s ledge at midnight,
with the carnations of the Epitaph
the sexton was desperately seeking.

I remained with this oracle:
to reunite in the garden of roses.
So I stood sentry at autumn’s Heraclean Pillars,
buried in earth the bones of cypresses in remembrance,
and the poor wood sorrel;
I muttered the spells of the mallow and the nettle,
dreamt of a script that would decipher the jasmine you smelt,
without so much as a grain of reward,
like the bereft prayer of the orphan
upon whom war has pledged
with a Christmas stocking, in vain to plead,
angel’s return,
and in patience observes, the fluttering of carefree swallows

nesting among cypress trees in March.

Thus, I remain

with this brotherly oracle
outside the confessional
just before baptism,
when the bishop orders “the doors, the doors”
and the Erinys seal the mind,
in my vigil for you.