I remember how,
stumbling back from some awful café that
wanted nothing to do with us, arm in
arm in drunken Bohemia, you cried.

Cried about your family, how you
left them behind beyond the sea;
your relentless insistence that you were
a bad sister, a worse child.

I refused to accept it.
You fell asleep in the bathtub that night.

2. I remember how,
during those soirées, when you leaned across
my lap, arm on my knee, making benign conversation with those at our table.

How natural it came to us, the ease
with which you fell about me,
even when, then, I was with another;
we never addressed that though.

We took a car home that night.
I couldn’t stay with you, nor with her.

3. I remember how,
alone as we were one winter morning,
you lay down all sullen, made yourself small, lamenting the cold dark day before us.

You meekly refused when I offered, but
when I draped you regardless
in my long sheepskin coat, you pulled the fur right round your body for warmth.

Then in silence you watched me.
Playing piano, basking in your gaze.