her father told me
she laid in lavender fields.
a light breeze in 1989 carried from
winter, through to spring.
“oh! the allergy,
it set in her skin”, he said
like dried violet paint
- boiling on the pavement.
the purest blur of sunlight.

as a child i stole
old photo albums
that contained the musk of
her youth.
cupping them in my arms.
the fear of being robbed of something
that i never understood.

i remember her
and her sisters in a straight line
six shoulder blades kissing
cement ridges in brick walls.
aunt melissa painted lions,
the surface of the moon,
sticky fingers on chalky black canvas.
until her body gave up in 1995,
her two frozen lungs.