Did her mind finally take flight like it was always secretly longing to do? Did it come free to float there in the fog? There where she will not batter the others, like she herself was battered? Will the cycle end with that one final ascending? Are there stars up there? Does she still remember the first time she held me? What songs are there to sing where she is? Will she dance like when she was a young girl? She has become untethered but, below, her hands still remember how to tie knots. To fasten her sari. To fix my grandfather’s necktie. To loop string around my mother’s ankles and keep her down, keep her sinking, like she herself was sunken, once.

She is kinder now. She can’t be hurt and she can’t hurt. Can you get so full of memories you just stop keeping them? A trail of discarded moments left by her feet as she wanders. Conversations we will have over and over with her, and then never again.

What does she see where she is, so high above? Does she still dream where she is? Dreams she can’t share with anyone. When was the last time she told someone her dreams? Does she see her whole life below her like a vast and unfamiliar landscape? Who is that girl? Armor-less and unrecognizable. Does she know yet all the people who she will slip into this world? A matriarch’s parade marching at her back where she cannot see them. In return we will give her more memories than her mind can bear, and this is what will send it away from her.

How do I reach her where she is in that impenetrable place? Tell me what rituals to enact — I have so much still to learn from her. I have so much still to blame her for. I sat at her feet as she rocked back and forth in prayer and then she tied my mother’s feet together and told her how not to speak. Didn’t she know better? All those sisters of hers — didn’t any one of them tell her the truth?

But then what have I told my sister except how to disappear?