My Sister

Do you remember my sister?

How many mistakes did she make with those never blinking eyes?

I couldn't work it out

I swear she could read your mind

Your life, the depths of your soul at one glance

Maybe she was stripping herself away

Saying, here I am, this is me

I am yours and everything about me, everything you see

If only you look hard enough

I never could

Our life was a pillow-fight

We'd stand there on the quilt

Our hands clenched ready

Her with her milky teeth, so late for her age

And a Stanley knife in her hand

She sliced the tires on my bike and I couldn't forgive her

She went blind at the age of five

We'd stand at the bedroom window, and she'd get me to tell her what I saw

I'd describe the houses opposite, the little patch of grass next to the path

The gate with its rotten hinges forever wedged open

That dad was always going to fix

She'd stand there quiet for a moment

I thought she was trying to develop the images in her own head

Then she'd say

"I can see little twinkly stars

Like Christmas tree lights in faraway windows

Rings of brightly colored rocks

Floating around orange and mustard planets

I can see huge tiger striped fishes

Chasing tiny blue and yellow dashes

All tails and fins and bubbles"

I'd look at the gray house opposite, and close the curtains

She burned down the house when she was ten

I was away camping with the scouts

The fireman said she'd been smoking in bed

The old story, I thought

The cat and our mum died in the flames

So dad took us to stay with our aunt in the country

He went back to London to find us a new house

We never saw him again

On her 13th birthday, she fell down the well in our aunt's garden and broke her head

She'd been drinking heavily

On her recovery, her sight returned

A fluke of nature, everyone said

That's when she said she'd never blink again

I would tell her when she started at me

With her eyes wide and watery

That they reminded me of the well she fell into

She liked this, it made her laugh

She moved in with a gym teacher when she was 15

All muscles he was

He lost his job when it all came out and couldn't get another one

Not in that kind of small town

Everybody knew everyone else's business

My sister would hold her head high, though

She said she was in love

They were together for five years until one day he lost his temper

He hit over the back of the neck with his bull worker

She lost the use of the right side of her body

He got three years and was out in 15 months

We saw him a while later

He was coaching a non-league football team in a Cornwall seaside town

I don't think he recognized her

My sister had put on a lot of weight from being in a chair all the time

She'd get me to stick pins and stub out cigarettes in her right hand

She'd laugh like mad because it didn't hurt

Her left hand was pretty good though

We'd have arm wrestling matches

I'd have to use both arms and she'd still beat me

We buried her when she was 32

Me and my aunt, the vicar, and the man who dug the hole

She said she didn't want to be cremated

And wanted a cheap coffin, so the worms could get to her quickly

She said she liked the idea of it

Though I thought it was because of what happened to the cat, and our mum