'My Sister Dresses as a Wave' by Anne Daly

Of two sisters one is always the watcher, one the dancer

—Louise Glück

A photograph, taken not with a phone but with one of those disposable cameras that we used to bring on big nights out. Between my fingers, you are caught mid-movement, hair swinging, glass in hand. Your mouth is open, either singing or laughing or both, and you are so perfectly you, I can only smile.  The flash has done something strange to the lighting in the bar. You are surrounded by speckles of white. Your skin and camisole have turned sepia tinged with blue. You are the colour of the sea, painted mercury by the mid-winter sun and you crest towards the edge of the frame.

I keep it in my drawer, because it doesn’t have the poise or elegance of the ones I hang on my wall. But it holds the grace of your voice, so long unheard. The lilt of the incoming tide, sighing against the sand.

And sometimes, when I pass a mirror quickly, I think it is you flitting by. Your warmth, a brief disturbance, amongst the icy tones of glass. Your almost image, a fracture of the waves or the shrapnel of a sea breeze spilling against my cheek. So I pull out that old photo, and I sit awhile. And I watch, and I watch as you dance, through the salt-flecked air.