One day my sister appears
at an Art fair
near the Scituate farmland

When I see her she is sitting
in a wheelchair,
her body wrapped in a shawl.

Swollen knees with brown
leather braces. She
whispers, I cant dance now.

She shows me an old picture
of the two of us, we were
standing near Santa Claus
downtown in the fifties.

'When the Winter comes,
I think of you
and your birthday in December, '
my sister began.

She told me she had
been meaning to call me.
Her dog died. Her daughter
moved out.

You look the same, she
tells me, that same round face
and doll hair. She laughs.

You should have seen me
dancing in Vegas, she brags,
The ballroom light dashing
against the wall, the music
blasting me deaf.

My sister reaches down
to rub her knees
Age is cruel, she says
Bones were never meant to last.

Louise Marie DelSanto

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/dancing-in-las-vegas/