Sister

I remember a blue kiddy pool sliding downhill. I remember cracks in a faded green hose. I see a living stream of silver, warm then cold, pouring forth a rising body of water. I lie down, belly first in that perfectly shallow bowl, quickly heated by the sun. There were creatures spotting the rippled surface, lifted off the pool by light playing in the tiny waves. That backyard slanted, but somehow we stuck, the only time I ever remember. The Redding sun was an explosion in the sky, a prickly white light reaching out from a single point in the heavens. There is no want in its glare. We will remember the heat of it forever, and talk about it like a dead mother. That day, it toasted us in a soup of splashing laughter. We were raised up above the first floor of our home - our memory removed from the toils of our long gray patio, from the creased and heavy stare of the kitchen, and from the deep slumped shadows of the dining room. These spaces now are only white gold, without description, filled with the shower of sunlight. I cannot remember you, only imagine. But, in recalling my giggling and where my eyes looked with a child’s pure love and admiration, I see you. We stepped from the pool into our upstairs world. In our underwear, toweled and toasted, we lay together in the original innocence. My skin, the smoothest warmth I can ever remember, so warm I suck my thumb and rub my tummy with my small hands, moving my fingers around my belly’s bulge. The sun, much less direct, spilled into the cupped wooden hands of the balcony and through the sliding glass door, sending dust stars floating above our napping heads.