Blue Mountain Arts Poetry Contest

My Sister
by Madeleen Olwage

Twenty-Ninth Contest
Honorable Mention

My sister has always been a dancer,
a dreamer 
she was four when I burst into her tulle-tinsel world;
I was the baby of the family,
and even then 
she tip-toed
around me
on daintily arched feet.
She welcomed her little sister
with an emerald-eyed glance;
ready to beguile
and, as we both grew older,
a look that always noticed the tiniest of details
in
movement
in
melody
in
me

She floated through childhood
on playful pirouettes
and spun sullen, boring Sundays
into twirls and flight and jazz

and when she left home,
at eighteen
with only her light-lavender paisley bag
swollen with Indian scarves and blue gypsy-skirts 
she moved with the same ease into the 
gleaming, 
terrifying
Unknown.

I waited for her to return
mimicking her magic
with clumsy turns
and stumbling steps;
creating a familiar music in my mind
to lead her home...

It was not until the December rain
started to fall on a parched, silent earth
that she stood in front of me
with bleached jeans
and twine-bracelets;

and then quietly, knowingly
she took my hand
and from her sister-wise eyes
leaped a dare, an invitation:

Come, her eyes smiled.
Dance with me.

About the Author
Nomadic Namibian. Poet-in-Progress.