a cocker spaniel
stops to pee on the chronicle newsrack
good dog, good dog
worst paper in America, I tell my mother

she laughs, small boxes floating down Washington street
my mother, my sister and I share one laugh
funny living with my sister and
hearing echoes, I hear her talking
and think it's me
or mother on the answering machine, or me, drunk
I think it's her

my sister and I have
the same life at
differing speeds, but not
my mother
I’m thinking of her drawing winnie-the-pooh
on the walls of my childhood
bedroom, in a condemned house

and I am her age now
no children, no husband
no condemned house
an abortion each
the thing we share, an unborn brother
her grandchildren dead as the one son
who might have kept it

and we aren't lonely, she
might be wistful
and in my sister's coffee shop novelist life
and my waiting tables for Spain life
and my mother's flight from Iowa to Sausalito life
her flight from Massachusetts to Iowa decades earlier

the other thing we share