By Sheila Bender
You wowed us with the horse’s neigh you taught
yourself to imitate so well that neighbors
thought we kept one in our house.
On the wall, as I remember it, a painting of a charcoal
colored horse on a pink background, a treasure
our parents bought for you because you loved it.
And how pure that love of yours, without anger
at my unfulfilled promises of playing Monopoly,
my disallowing your turn to wear our favorite hair bow.
And there was the black hole of sad notes,
you secretly pushed into the open seam no one
saw in the neck of your stuffed panda.
You drove us crazy when you fell in love
with Peggy Lee’s voice, “Everybody got the fever,”
again and again from the phonograph in our shared room.
Copyright Bender 2017