Getting to Know Me - a collection of six-word memoirs

Faith
Often in fits and starts, believing.
Sometimes falling into abyss of doubt.

Myself
A unified dichotomy of two selves.
Tongue, knife-sharp, softened with age.

Reading
Zealous lover of other people's stories.
Surrounded by books, millions of words.

Politics
Conservative Republican looking for liberal affection.
Big government will never regulate me.

Most Importantly, Dogs
Healthy grieving? Tell me you're joking.
Life's too short to live alone.
In my tale, plenty of tails.

Me and My Sister

We're sick, fevers one hundred and two,
thermometers poked under our tongues
and forgotten.

In the day our mother off to work.
At night she soaks in the bath tub
hours on end,

courting a long-neck bottle of beer and
thinking (we're sure, we've talked it over)
of our father

who's disappeared.
Vanishing acts both of them.

Our faces are flushed my sister
bursts into a coughing fit and
our mother

never screams out from the bath tub
"Are you all right?" the way she did
in our happier days.