I'm thinking of you today.

You and I feeding the rabbits
behind your house
gathering dandelion and dock leaves on the
windy, flat common in Essex.

You had a Space Hopper
roller skates and a pogo stick.
some of those made me fall off, but the
Space Hopper was easy.
your sisters were running everywhere
we were looking more like sisters
than my sister and I, or your sisters and you
both with brown hair
brown eyes
almost the same smile.

In photographs, you
were always a blur, on the move,
hating to be photographed,
transient as air, a blur of hair
and moving arms, a picture
of shyness wanting to be somewhere else.

There were the cats, the rabbits,
long summers, vast flat grasslands,
dock and dandelion, clover
and buttercups spilling over the ditches,
butterflies riding the wind,
children riding Space Hoppers, roller skates
and dream ships forever.
Forever meant forever then:
nothing would ever change,
we would never get older,
there was never danger.

I'm thinking of you today.
Please get well soon.