The awkward bend Pauline Sewards

Pauline Sewards

The awkward bend

We are driving up the steep hill alongside Woodvale cemetery. Down in the valley, folded into lights, is the street we lived in forty years ago.

If I turned that house upside down I’d find no trace of us: not a cleaning rota, or a nettle pie in an enamel dish or the wigs we wore for the 1960’s party just before we all moved our separate ways.

I have held you, lightly, for decades In hand-drawn maps with travel instructions your looped handwriting in birthday cards, the glass bead earrings you gave me when you were ill and they were too heavy to wear

and the afternoon you were more than by my side as we giggled and yelled our way through childbirth arguing with the midwife, a strict PE teacher on the 13th floor of the hospital with a sea view.

Both of us have libraries of friends ask little of each other and deliver a lot. Turning is easier at night when the oncoming traffic shows up.