from From "Willy Loman's Reckless Daughter"

Prologue Willy Loman’s reckless daughter flies quietly,fluttering like a silk-moth behind me blocking my life, my scenesin whichever stage direction she wants. Sometimes at night I can feel her dialing into me,her ringing calls like an imperial decree. When she sleeps she crashes, like a carinto the guardrail of my ambition. Her curse like a poison I cannot smell,an asphyxiation of the self by the self, that hell and hard sell. Split personalities, we dream through the night,of our merger and acquisition, in her half-moon light, Not even my husband can feelher there between us—a secret contract under seal. When I awaken, her irises touch mine;an awful, indecipherable fault line. She’s a character in search of an author, a devotee,trying to recount her history through me, until I channel her. She’s like a phantom limb,hymn to the invisible. Her shameless whims, the subtext of my lies. Under her tinted hairthe forest murmurs, becomes a thought, or prayer. Until her thoughts tumble into mine;colors bleed. In the morning, I’m overwrought— My patrilineal kin, she begins to wear thin,when she undoes hospital corners I’ve tucked so gently in. Her cool white rising is meringue completing—the high-pitched silence of our congealing. She was always ceremonially unfoldinghis white shirts, unpressing the folds in my circumstance. I did and didn’t want her. I kepttrying to catch her, then let her slip. Any intent to have her near made her more invisible. Her electricbreasts overfilled my brassieres. An interaction, our dialectic— She never removes her hat upon entering the doorto my personality. Ma semblable, ma soeur!