dear sister,
DAISY BIGNELL
Dear Sister,
He has always been besotted with you. You can see his love in his side glances and smirks, in his thoughtful gestures and in the dog-eared pages in their favorite Asian cookbooks. You shrug your shoulders and smile at the floor, concealing your truth as our Instagram ‘cool girl’ is caught falling in love.
They met at university, as young lovers do. On a sports social night their worlds’ collided. A vodka-soaked boy stood immersed in her housemate's pink hair as she soberly rolled her eyes. They ran into each other more regularly after that until new years eve, where their meetings morphed from chance encounters with friends to something entirely different.
They lived apart after University. These were the years of separation; driving across the country and late night phone calls until he drove through a snowstorm to meet her for the final time.
But the couple became restless as they neighboured overpriced coffee shops and pretentious vinyl markets. They eventually welcomed the next stop; Malaysia. Their travels were endless and I grew uncertain as to whether I would see my sister again, but I did. Postcards sang poems of the local cuisine, polaroids watercolored their underwater lives, and the ring on her finger, one day, sealed their fate.
I’ll recite your story as if folklore breathes life into such a love,
“On a quiet night after dinner, you made your way to the balcony in your block. You were carrying the wine glasses down and a speaker. You passed him a bottle of unopened Edinburgh gin and he clung to his bag. The lights from Singapore sang against the Malaysian skyline, it was perfect. Our glasses clinked full of Indian tonic and our lives changed once again.”
I hope to have a story like yours one day.
Always,
Your hopeless sister