I kill a baby raccoon with my car

on Scuttlehole Road, and feel sick

the night my sister Nina

dreamed she died.

“I tried to tell you,” she says to Allison.

“But my texts wouldn’t send…

because I was a ghost.”

There are too many omens this weekend,

even when we play cards at the kitchen table

and my father walks unluckily through the room

while I’m reading “if someone refuses

to go down on you, you ___________.”

He pours bourbon over vanilla ice cream

and retreats to the bedroom.

My mother’s feet in his lap

gives me a strange feeling of childhood again.

“Oh my god” she says at the television

What? I ask

But she doesn’t explain.

Allison’s turn to judge:

“I got 99 problems but a ___________ ain’t one.”

Her boyfriend submits Grandma.

“No one wins,” Allison says and rips

the grandma card into fourths.

I’m reminded of how solemn a child she was.

No take backs.

Her boyfriend defends himself.

“I meant it cause she was dope,

she was never a problem.”

But the card is gone and so is she

and so is the bourbon.

I’m waiting on something that never arrives.

It doesn’t even rain.