Family Portrait

Did you know that life would come to this?
Flattened memories pressed between wax
the essence of our efforts forgotten,
the dreams, so carefully construed, lost.

You leaned toward the conventional,
and I was ever the sentimentalist,
and yet we ended up in the same place –
shadow selves standing at the banks
of our dishevelled lives…

Survivors, nonetheless, tokens
of a a past riddled with so many lies,
so much heartbreak…

We are ghost sisters
haunted, hunting,
unable to step away –

Drawn in,
pulling apart –
all that remains.

(Family Portrait first appeared here February, 2019. Edited here. Image my own)

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VJ

Permission to write, paint, and imagine are the gifts I gave myself when chronic illness hit - a fair exchange: being for doing. Relevance is an attitude. Humour essential.

36 thoughts on “Family Portrait”

  5. Oh, the sister relationship is such an interesting thing. Some sisters are best friends. Others (like mine) are miles apart yet cling to the DNA tendons that keep us together. This is a lovely poem, VJ, that makes me ponder my own relationship with my sister.

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  12. Very fitting! A hint of synchronicity if you will. I finished reading a short story that has some elements to what you wrote; then minutes later, I listened to your voice read your own words.

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