how i would arrive home exhausted from working and you would bundle me into the shower, every kitchen smell slowly exorcised from my skin, my hair until i was lemon scented and then after i sat at your feet while with the greatest of patience you worked the comb through all my tangles and snarls until my hair lay tamed at last against my back.

a crippling case of tendinitis, my feet felt like cement blocks. a stranger in a monk’s cassock patiently worked on my ankles until the nerves sang and worked until they were quiet again and i could walk on feet instead of stumps. this, every ten kilometres for twenty kilometres, then every two for the last ten.

this seems insane to me now but as twelve year olds we’d crack each other’s backs. you lay on your side and one hand held your shoulder and the other your hip — ready? snap: pulled two ways at once with a sound like a whipstrike but it was your spine. this, to relieve the tension and stress of being twelve. her brother had the quickest draw and the fiercest grip, and every time i wondered if this would be the one to sever me, once and for all. this, this the source of the relief, perhaps.