Because I Did Not See Colleen

skip the stone across the wide lake,

the sound appeared like teeth 
chattering, and I startled,

slipping on wet moss. Or, it might 
have happened another way.

She had skipped around her friends 
and then flittered over to me

to throw stones in the lake. Or over 
the lake. And I was doing it all wrong.

I skipped the stone, or the small rock
didn’t skip, but plunked to the bottom

and we walked home in the quiet 
of our resentment for each other.

My side hurt, I do remember that 
clearly, or it was that I hugged

my bruised elbow to my chest.
What had she said to me

in the warm, wet afternoon?
Something about history

that she had read in her books,
or her friends, who each hated
 
me in their own way. Jealous 
maybe, or older and therefore tired

of smaller children. But now, 
while I think about the lake,

our older siblings gone somewhere 
on their own missions, my sister

and I allowed anywhere we pleased.
My sister’s friends somewhere

we are not. And it seemed to me, Colleen
didn’t even mind it. Leaving them

to come over and be irritated 
at her younger sister. Although

not much younger, I have always said. 
I had slipped, I think. And Colleen

helped me up, annoyed. I had been 
so proud then, the way she showed

me off to her friends like a prize.