By Áine Rose Connell
Greyness drinks colour from the sky,
knocks it back clean. A notepad is filled
by a girl in a field, where two quiet horses
are ghost ships in the sea. Her mind empties
like a diving tank. Aware of something
winging the back of her neck, a softness
to the belly. She imagines the big sister
running laps of the road. She chases
this feeling. Months pass. Years.
She tries not to think of big sister
in a blackened-out room
a video-cassette stuck on loop.
A nurse calling to say the neuts are low.
One by one flicks of hair, lashes, brows fall
out to drift the air and rest on the floor.
Medication tubs, hollowed empty,
with sister’s name on the label printed
in bold. A slit incision yawns wide
for a central venous line, tubing its way
to big sister’s jugular. In time, it hardens,
pale stained wine. There’s something elliptical
the way a hole once cut, continues to dot,
scatters ink. The girl, older, fingers a scar
the same shape, mottled-purple, almost wet,
near the breast. Now: watch it ooze.