WONDER
Little, under six, we three
cried our strep throats
raw.
Only ice cream, smoothly
vanilla,
soothed the pain.
In a sudden cure we leaped
out of bed,
played like spring lambs.
Our mother
sighed, finally slept.
Two years later baby sister
grew listless,
legs cold and stiff in the
night.
We pulled long white socks
over her thin shanks, piled
on blankets.
I was seven, you were eight,
she was five
when she died. We heard
the grownups
whisper rheumatic fever.
Mother and father disappeared
in a cloud of grief.
We’ll always wonder
who our sister would have
been.
We wonder, too, who our
mother
would have been
had she not wandered the
rest of her life
through the gray shadows
of her guilt.
Patricia Wellingham-Jones, former psychology researcher/writer/editor, has been published in journals, newspapers, anthologies, and online. Her most recent books are Don’t Turn Away: Poems About Breast Cancer, Labyrinth: Poems & Prose, Apple Blossoms at Eye Level and Lummox Press Little Red Book series, A Gathering Glance. She lives in northern California.
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