Sisters

We women have a habit 

of keeping things 

and keeping things together.

There's a very old picture

of me and my sister

in one of my mother's albums.

A picture she has kept 

for a very long time now;

a picture from our childhood, 

the two of us 

wearing exactly the same clothes,

the same pretty blue and white frilled frocks! 

One of us staring in the camera, 

the other shying away! 

and every single time 

that I look at this picture,

I am reminded of how 

despite all our differences, 

and a hundred bitter fights;

some so bitter

that we almost fell apart ..

'We' have kept 'us' together. 

Women and the things 

we keep together! 

family photographs, families!