After forgiving my sister for punching me  
at our father’s second wedding, we make cannoli.  
 
She says she feels damaged by our parents’ divorce,  
and I smooth clumps of ricotta in a bowl,  
disguising white with vanilla and chocolate to tell her  
 
I don’t unearth what I’ve buried.  
We’re sisters, which is to say we carry the same  
sour inheritance in our bodies and only one of us  
 
speaks of it. Kneading the dough, she trains 
her hands to keep pain, hold her tongue  
in a clenched fist––still, it pulses in her palm.  
 
This is good dough; it obeys fingertips 
and catches its breath after every hard press.  
She says I must not feel suffocated by the split 
 
because I’ve never spoken about it, and she hates that.  
I shrug to show her the way grief sieves me into silence.  
I have retraced my tongue, tried to taste moments before– 
   
before the wedding, when a relative said she was amazed  
I turned out just fine, before the days divided, the new house,  
the twin bed, the court-ordered schedule, the conversation,  
 
the moving out. Before my parents needed my adaptability  
and before I was unwilling to break people with words  
used to break me.  
 
Boiling the shells, she admires how I’ve clasped their folds. 
Even in water, they stay intact.