My sister, soft and kind,
Used to love having her toes dug in the sand.
Myself, I complained;
The sand itched me
And felt as though it ran in my veins.
My sister would purr
About the enigmatic green world all around her.
I stayed indoors.
(I never, though, threw ******* on the floor).
My sister loved to walk:
Pavement, fields, mountains,
She'd walked the East Coast to the West,
Non-stop,
Staying in wind battered farmhouses for rest.
I hated walking.
I would run and hide behind century-old walls
That had crumbled in the middle of moors,
To roll skimpy wet cigarettes
And blow billowing purple clouds.
My sister never smoked,
She did love to smell fresh sticky tobacco, though.
When she had walked the breadth of this island
Her hair had only just grown back.
We played a bit of fantasy,
I pretended to like all these things,
Only for a while,
And only a little late.
I once again complain about the sand,
But now her blood is mixed into that.
And those last tangible bits of her -
The bones ground down -
Sit in the sodden earth
Beneath a with young tree.
I hate all these things.
But my sister,
The bit of her that was actually my mother;
Not all those god awful bits around her,
But her.
That is what I miss.
Not the final six years of miseryy,
Not the world where she came and left,
Not the shadow or impression,
Not the charade we played of loving nature.
But my sister,
My sister,
My sister.
...
The world is still the same:
The sand is still coarse,
That green enigma hasn't changed course,
Those century old walls -
Well, guess what?
They're still on the Moors.
None of those once beloved things,
And there are many I can't face bringing
To mention,
Watched my sister gargle her last breath.
Neither did they sit there years before and recognise
Her body melting and withering away.
I won't love these things in her memory,
They don't deserve that kind of reverie.
My sister was much like my mother,
And like every eldest daughter,
I didn't love or do enough.
But,
Neither did the world.
AM