So you have a sister

Works at Wal-Mart –

The oft-ridiculed ‘greeter’

Makes people smile

Forgetting their troubles

Walking in

But not out –

When the yellow smiley

Icon becomes a badge

Empowering her

To check receipts

Against purchases

She complains to you

Of her knees

As she dines on

KFC in the few moments

She has left before sleep

The cuter sister

Who wanted so much

Much more from life

So much – as long as

Much didn’t include

You or your like

“I don’t want to be like anybody else”

And so she isn’t – at all costs

She is unique –

Within the family anyway

She is able to hide from her disdain

For you

When she complains of her life

Compared to the abundance of love

She says she has

For you

And the abundance

Of things yours

This has been her lash

Skillfully applied

No pain

As you whip out your

Checkbook

You consider the  amount

As her “miss goody, goody”

Taunt rings in your head

You were never close

Resentment then guilt

Ties you to the mast

Of a chromosomal

Sharedness and

The fear that neither

Of you is different

How could that be?

Her world is bought

And paid for

With her greetings

Her gray smile that wanted more

Her hands that

Replace the ‘go-backs’

The same fingers that tremble

Around the rigid paycheck

That won’t stretch through

The one bedroom apartment

Off the strip

To next month’s untenable rent

You find the line

Enter the amount

That allows the roof

That covers her grief