fold / unfold
  
When it was our turn to try,
she stayed in the box room,
making no indent in the spare bed
  
eating only blonde crispbreads 
or strawberry bubblegum,
folding the wrappers into tiny pink hummingbirds.
  
She taught me to pleat and pinch the tails ‒
I watched her squash a sadness 
inside each beak.
  
Months later, the early morning call 
to say her fight by fridgelight 
was over; the heart, stopped –
  
I cried for hours in my borrowed skirt, 
surrounded by adults and their prayers 
that had done nothing to nourish her.
  
Back home in the spare room
I found a shoe box, filled
with a scented confetti of wings;
handfuls of them, weightless.

Sallyanne Rock