Missing a Sister

 Sometimes

Sometimes,

I feel you here

quietly sitting in a corner

leaning slightly onto

elbows resting on a bouncing knee.

You do not speak,

do not pass on your funny  stories

or your wisdom.

You don’t blow smoke rings

from  your MacDonald’s cigarette

over steamy cups of King Cole tea.

You don’t pull disobedient strands of long dark hair

behind your ears

the way you used to.

 

Nor do you cough in fits

 

or gasp to catch your breath

 

with each round of bubbly laughter

 

you release into the stale air

 

that I am, too often,

 

drowning in.

 

 

Yet...

 

Sometimes,

I sense you around me.

Hear an echo of that laughter

rumbling between these walls of solitude,

reaching way inside my heart

pulling out smiles

from places I thought were closed.

Faint traces of your perfume will

sometimes

override the odor of the morning’s bacon

that lingers on my drapes

and I will think of you.

You become a warm feeling … then

in the center of my chest.

That spark that once stirred in your cat green eyes

 will settle upon me

making the hairs on my arms dance in delight.

 

Sometimes,

I feel your sisterly arm around my shoulder.

Everything I didn’t say or didn’t do

is forgotten.

I feel peace

as your forgiveness wraps itself

around me in the rays of light

shining in from the  kitchen window. 

I feel your love and I know... 

I know…

 

it is all going to be Okay.

 

© Me 2005

Twenty years ago, on this day, I received a phone call from a very distraught brother that our sister Sandy had died in her sleep. Man, I miss my big sister!

All is well!