Stain   

Stainless Sister

 

Aunt and chums over tea and cakes

sifting through ancient snaps

admit my mother’s memory into childhood reminiscences,

the adult years not speaking skirted

like a giant turd.

 

The sisters’ last ‘Good Bye’, aunt skype waving

from her front window at the woman, in the clapped out Ford,

barely able to lift her cancer corrupted head.

 

Twenty years on still replaying her ex-husband’s

“I want to walk down the street with a woman who turns heads”;

 her sister’s beautiful face beseeching innocence

to a slammed front door, smashed phone, shredded letters.

 

Since then my mum’s photos handed to me as if scalding my aunt,

but at this previously unseen image,                   

a lanky legged child in black gabardine coat, beauty dormant,

 

aunt quietly, She could not have known then what would happen,

hurries away to peel potatoes for supper.