I had ghosts that needed slaying, sisters I hadn’t seen for thirty-five years

And my mother’s forgotten grave in Osbaston.

I cleared the years off the stone marker, picked wild primroses

Watered with my tears as I remembered you’d named them for me

Jean had forgotten I was coming, autumn leaf curled in her chair

Incomprehension at this stranger – Daily Express dripping poison on the floor

Nicotine walls, nicotine ceiling, nicotine air, sixties feet bare

Mobility Scooter Jim took our coats, coffee or tea?

I handed over flowers, bought from a High Street Grosser where an old man

Incongruously sat eating beans and eggs and told us he doesn’t like Scotland

You’d have thought, after all that time, we’d have something to say

This sister who once bathed me – but our talk was small

You once took me on a train to Brighton after our father died

Instead of primary school, we sat on uncomfortable pebbles by a cold sea

In contemplation of life lived and to come and never knowing

That Brighton beach would become a metaphor

I pointed out your youngest daughter’s wedding photo

Light and happy and untouched by the patina of time

It hung like a beacon of hope on your wall and you said

She’s a lesbian in incredulous tones

Jim brought out a newspaper cutting

An obituary of Jacquie Lyn in Pack Up Your Troubles 1932

She was our great aunt from California

You stood to say goodbye and you barely reached my heart

Then the eldest of us – Jacquie in a care home where

Staff ran ragged through builders dust

As the youngest child I find our roles reversed

And my half sister has been cruelly halved again

You retain your laugh, and your humour

Pulls you through what dementia has done

Our mother’s picture is by your bed and I remembered

Too late her words ‘Tell Jacquie I love her’ and the promise lay broken

Your hands picked at your skin as we sat closer than ever

But never so distant

I showed you Jean on my phone to distract you

And you laughed and said ‘Good God!’

When we left I’m sure I saw the light of recognition

Form in your eyes like a false dawn

Or a forgotten song you tried to recall

And the very act of breathing became painful for me

My pilgrimage ended at St Albans

Where Peter and Janice welcomed us as long lost cousins

Our mothers, two twins separated at birth

And their other sisters all beyond reach

We talked of Einstein’s theory of relativity,

Dark matter and unknowns closer to home

Like is eighty too late to become friends?

Or how strange that we both own our grandmother’s clocks

We watch our own children achieve escape velocity

Soaring exponentially away into their own universe

Until we can observe them no more

And return to our Fibonacci roots