<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Sisters<\/strong><\/p>\n We found her at the bottom of the garden We kept her in an ice cream box, We put a brick on the lid We were naughty – We loved her all winter, –<\/p>\n When we found the box in the spring <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Alix Scott-Martin<\/strong> has been an English teacher for the past 16 years. She is currently living in Rugby with her husband and two sons. Originally a linguist and translator, two recent Arvon foundation courses with Caroline Bird and Mark Haddon inspired her to start writing creatively again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sisters We found her at the bottom of the garden like a dropped apple, held her in the hollows of our palms afraid we might spill her now that she was ours. We kept her in an ice cream box, lined it with kitchen roll, pierced the lid for air, made a matchbox […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[138,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2019-poetry-picks","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18204"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18205,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18204\/revisions\/18205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nlike a dropped apple,
\nheld her in the hollows of our palms
\nafraid we might spill her
\nnow that she was ours.<\/p>\n
\nlined it with kitchen roll,
\npierced the lid for air,
\nmade a matchbox bed snug with cotton wool
\nand that night she slept under a skewer hole sky.<\/p>\n
\nwhen she tried to escape and to stop the
\ncat who heard her scrabbling fingernails.<\/p>\n
\nheld her eyelids down
\nand brushed them blue
\nwith Mummy\u2019s make-up from the drawer,
\nrouged her cheeks.
\nWe stripped our Barbies,
\nlaid them tits up and
\ndressed her in their mini skirts
\nand netted gowns,
\npushed her feet
\ninto tiny plastic shoes,
\ncut her long hair short
\nto make her sexy.<\/p>\n
\ntook turns to pop her in our pockets
\nand let her run along our arms.
\nIt was your idea to sprinkle her with salt
\nlike slugs. We tried pepper too,
\ngiggled at her tiny atchoo.
\nWe filled the basin to see if she could swim,
\nsquealed when we almost lost her
\nas the water slurped and gargled
\ndown the plughole.<\/p>\n
\nwe didn\u2019t want to lift the lid –
\nheld it at arm\u2019s length –
\nwould have walked away
\nif it wasn\u2019t for the stink.
\nWe peered inside – you retched.
\nWe brushed her into the compost bin
\nwith the egg shells and grass \u2013
\ntried to forget those little rigid hands.<\/p>\n