i memorized this poem, so i’m typing it from memory.
The Calderstones (9) - Lesley Wheeler
It was a man’s duty to shelter his beaten-down
sister and her two teenage boys, although
how six people in three beds could make room
for three more was anybody’s guess. She’d go
soon, he promised, but everybody else in the clan
had put them up before, and this time they closed
their linen curtains: never again. Their aunt was good fun,
the kids decided. Little sums disappeared,
and trinkets from the cabinets, but then
she burst in with sacks of cream buns. That generous,
she was, and full of comic stories. Well, one
green dawn his wife’s engagement ring was missed.
Pawned, and no money to buy it back with. Gone
the emerald hour. Auntie homeless again.
