Ink & Wine Bottles

Your arms open and I’m ten again, sitting between my sisters. I’m warm and comfortable and at ease and Home. You wrap your arms around me and I feel how strong you are. How strong you are for me. I feel the weight you carry in the pigment of your skin and the doubt and darkness drift out through your fingertips as I hold you. We are weak. We are love. We are Home. Your hand on my thigh under the table. We fell asleep holding hands more than once. You came to my house and we’d lay on my bed and even when we’d go out it always felt like Home. You did a lot of shit and you hurt me and I hurt you and I’ve pretended to be strong like you are and to move on like you are and to be okay like you are. I’ve been angry at you for months but I’m tired. So tired. I want to stop ignoring my aunty when she asks about you. I want to come to you and to come Home.

It was an ex-boyfriend who first told me of this secret. He said that his aunty had passed away a couple of years before we met and that he often thought he loved her more than his mum. He wore the watch she bought him religiously. ‘The bond between a nephew and an aunty is so special. So special.’ It was one of those things that flits in and out of your mind every now and then, you think about it at odd times, but never when it really should stand out. I have four (and a step-) nephews. Whether I got a glimpse of them an hour after they were born or came into my life at age thirteen, I love them so much. They’re so different. I love watching them grow and become more like their mum or a distant relative, hearing about what they said on Christmas morning or getting a message from them while I’m interstate saying they got a tattoo on their leg and not to tell my sister. They crack me up. Whenever it’s school holidays and I get to take them out for the day and play