i want to feel soft like the warm underbelly of a puppy.
i want to walk in long grass like a little girl, feel the wheat
tickling my legs as i pass.
i want to keep ladybirds in jam jars
and read with a torch under the covers past 11pm.

i want to giggle about things that don't really make sense
and make fairy houses out of twigs and leaves
and scrape my knees from falling off my bike.

i want to run through sprinklers in multicoloured swim suits
and eat warm toast with butter when it rains outside the window.

i want to wear mismatched hats and scarves
and read books upside down,
drink hot chocolate from mugs with faded cartoon characters
and eat coco pops, only on the weekend.

i want to wear my hair in two pigtails, one high, one low,
and i want you to make up a song and perform it to me,
whirling your skirt in the garden, doing handstands,
picking me daisies and placing them in my small, starfish hands.

your life is in boxes now, impermanent.
moving books and bags and clothes horses,
your socks in neat piles in a suitcase.
i'm sure some still have holes.

i love that you're my sister
and i miss that you were once my world.
when the end of the garden was the furthest distance between us,
when we spoke through tin cans joined by string
instead of on the phone.

a string stretching miles,
years.
i wonder when i will next braid your hair,
soft like a puppy's fur,
soft like warm laughter,
soft like our gentle childhood,
closed tight in a jam jar,
tucked into bed somewhere far away.