sister-sick

From very far away she blinked at me tearily. ‘I’m a little bit lonely today,’ she said, very small, and I almost checked flight prices. She gave me a tour through the flat, her sofa bed in the startlingly bright living room with its homely little mountain of clothes and pictures on the window sill, and a blue packet of German cigarettes. Outside on the balcony the snow lay thick, still. She shows me a plant pot ash tray with spiky cigarette butt hair, and a little yellow hut below surrounded by cars. The mafia use that hut, she says, and drive away in different cars. In the bathroom by the toilet she shows me a porn magazine. I don’t want to know whose it is, she shudders. The parrot has gone now, but she has pot plants and a blue tea pot, and a boy in the room down the hall training to be a paramedic. But, he’s shy, she says sadly. I tell her about Cambridge, where nothing has changed, and spend twenty minutes pursuading her that being in Berlin looking for a job is infinitely more exciting. She blows kisses at the camera before I leave for the weak winter sun and the walk to the library. I miss her very much.