distance: an inventory

1. Mum, at the door, leaving, her tight arms telling me everything about how much I am, and her

warm neck (I remember the skin there, damp from my tears) -

she'd like to curl me up into herself, my daughters in me, like a queen wasp backwards, I think. I

wouldn't mind.

2. Embracing a friend in the street, and what starts as a quick hello keeps on, because there’s

energy in the connection, and everything is hard and tired.

3. The sister-knot, long practised, always something silly in it. Swinging steps or a joke that no one else will get. A battle for arm supremacy.

4 bare-shouldered aunts at weddings, skin slack-soft and powder perfume.

Even those - 5 - awkward chest-avoiding things with people who don’t usually, all elbows,

or 6, air-kisses with posh in-laws, or 7, greetings with European friends when you start on the

wrong side or do too many, or too few.

When the shop assistant’s fingers graze mine, 8, as I hold my hand out for change, and 9: trying

a firm and manly handshake but I’m a woman and my hands always sweat.

I would sometimes stroke the head of a friend’s child. 10.

Or 11 touch someone’s arm when I was sorry, or sincere, or pretending to be sincere. Or

making a joke about being sincere.

my children’s careless limbs on me and over each other’s my husband’s hands his arms and his long frame.

Fortunate mammals.