You, my sweet sister, are returned by the gift of my Lord, back from the dead. I wept for the loss of you, and I spoke to the one who was on high, and he told me that this sickness was not unto death, but to proclaim the glory of creation; for if you were not lost, you could never have been found, and now I will hug you, I will embrace you, tighter than I ever could have, were you never to have left my side. The tears I cried were of a different taste, not bitter, but sweet; tears for a sapling that still grew in my heart, uncut by years, and sprawling with joy.

I took no anesthesia for the vivid cut of my dreams, but even in that trepidatious unreality, you showed your care. I always sensed it still there, in every world, in every lifetime. I felt you still moving in my habit, in my faces, my laughs, and in my outcries. A few excised, as a stale offering to the idol of progress, but countless more stayed, shaping the raw manipulations of my sinew, the actions not even the strongest mind could moderate. You live in my body, and now you live in my sight, as well. A gift of christened candy for which I never could have truly wished, its sticky-sweetness melting on my tongue, and warming the parts of me which can’t be warmed by covers. I am renewed in my life-breath, as I shout for all to see, “My sister is alive, my heaven’s decree! Her heart still beats, and her lungs still breathe!”