For Lani

More about For Lani

Long ago
we made a pact
to grow old together,
eating brownies
whenever we pleased.
I think of that now--
now that you’re gone.

We made other pacts.
Like when we skipped Vacation Bible School.
We sat barefoot by the riverbank,
sucking Smarties,
testing tricks from the Magic Shop.
I promised,
Brownie’s honor,
not to tell.

You were the rebel.
I, your little sister,
gladly in training.

And then you grew--
long-runner legs,
clever, radiant,
sun-spun hair,
eyes lit with first love.

You read Jung and Tolkien
in your quiet room,
and drew in the margins
so I would follow.
I did.
Even though I was still in Narnia,
still too young to understand,
it felt like being chosen.

We traveled—
sometimes by ship.
And when you left for college,
standing alone on that crowded deck,
I tried to be brave
as the streamers between us
stretched,
then snapped--
like my heart
as the ship pulled away.

That was our first goodbye.

Years passed
with study and work,
love and its losses,
and the threading of our sisterhood—
sometimes a tangle,
sometimes a braid.
You, the teacher,
too wise and knowing.
Me, still insisting
on being seen
for who I was,
not just who I had been.

Still, rarely a week,
sometimes a day,
went by without a check-in.

Except the last.
I’d left my phone at work.
You texted,
lightly:

“So now I know
why waiting for tests and surgeries
here is better
than being at home…”

I read it afterward,
thought how casual it seemed—
the oxygen drop,
the nurse,
the nasal cannula,
the pain meds.
Your tone
so unmistakably you.
Calm.
Unrattled.
Perhaps even shielding me.

You never liked to be too obvious.

Even in your art—
that signature elephant,
always present.
Sometimes in the corner,
or stepping forward in gold and red.

Was it
a power animal,
a mindfulness cue,
Ganesh, remover of obstacles?
I leaned toward the god—
but most times
it looked like a nursery toy,
soft with use,
floppy with love.

Maybe it was all of it.

One last memory:
a night on a ship.
When the others had gone to bed,
we slipped beneath the “no trespassing” chain,
crawled to the bow,
and sat shoulder to shoulder
looking through the anchor portal.

The sea moved steadily below us,
as we cut through
the starry, endless, foaming night.

I felt it then—
under the vastness,
the mystery
-- a belonging.

As if the deep knew
what we could not say.
Our souls,
never easily parted,
still traveling.
Onward.

(Image from an adapted Zettel prompt)