The grandmother ever at my shoulder

What harm another little nub of butter?

A pinch of sage would lift the whole thing

 

Navigating the gaps as nimbly now as she did

In her dimly-lit kitchen with its three trip-up steps to sprinkle and stir

Her jealous Jack Russell and me always lapping at her feet

 

My grandfather appearing out of thin air, his fine white hair backlit

A smear of engine grease across his forehead

Cutting through the seasoned haze with its air of industry

 

My mother and her Irish twin hovering together

Inseparable after birth, throughout their lives

Between death and life, and forever after

 

Their baby sister borne between them

Whose tiny feet never touched the ground

For as long as they both had lived

 

In every sunset, a swell of light to lift

You away out of the falling day

And carry you through the dark

 

These ghosts I wear

Who bear

Me up

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Anne Casey is an Irish-Australian writer/literary editor with poems published internationally in newspapers, magazines, journals and books. Her writing and poetry rank in ‘The Irish Times’ newspaper’s Most-Read. In 2017, Salmon Poetry published Anne’s poetry collection, ‘where the lost things go’. She has won the Glen Phillips Novice Writer Award, has been commended in the Bangor Forty Words Competition and has been shortlisted for the Cúirt International Poetry Prize, Eyewear Books Poetry Prize and Bedford International Writing Competition, among others.  Connect with her on online and on Twitter: @1annecasey