I think of the morning we came home from school
You did not understand, school lasted till three.
I was more scared of Mum than the teacher but I came home with you.
You were only five, I thought, forgetting I had been five two years ago and had stayed when I wanted to go because I would get the strap.
My heart was beating like that tap dance I made you do
at the concerts I organised at the river when you giggled
and couldn’t stop and wet your pants in front of everyone
seven kids and a dog.
I did not feel very loving then.
And then and then － you are dead, my sister, my sister is dead －
I want to run through the streets crying.
Last week your daughter and I remembered, ‘Thirty years,’
she said, ‘I can’t believe it. Thirty years.’
‘Yesterday,’ I said, ‘yesterday. We can run through the streets together －
‘although,’ I added, ‘I’ll have to take my stick…’
I think of all those words, the tellings, the books, the dancing, the day I threw your teddy bear, Edward B Jones, up on the roof…
How could I have done that?
The slow awakenings － the realisation － this is forever
these ongoing lessons －
how hard it is to love, how vulnerable we make ourselves.
Easy targets － we run and sing and dance towards these lessons
and as we stumble, recover, keep walking, one foot in front of the other,
falling, smiling, failing, crying, laughing, hugging, falling again
that forever mixed-up lesson － how easy, how hard, oh how bloody hard
it is to love.
Renée
