first memory by Tracy Wai de Boer

the hailstorm
the steaming bathtub

dad walked me home
and we got caught
big hail fist big dark

ran me a bath with curled steam
more menace than comfort

fear of the water at four years old—
maybe younger
don’t remember if sarah
was born yet

one of my friends
had a sister
also named sarah

i try not to bring it up
not to mention my sarah
to her

once on the other sarah’s birthday
(when my friend and i were living by the sea)
we sprinkled roses pink and yellow
along the shoreline
in her honour

never celebrated the birthday
of someone no longer
private ritual to mourn
i almost cried
but not my sarah to cry for

my friend said she’d eaten a piece
of key lime pie that day
because her sister’s favourite colour
was green

This poem was featured in Issue 08 of Canthius.

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Tracy Wai de Boer (she/her) is a writer and artist living on unceded lək̓ʷəŋən territory. Her creative practice involves documentation and meditations on beauty and the mundane. Tracy co-authored Front Lines: Voices from the Toronto Writers Collective and Impact: Women Writing After Concussion, which was awarded Best Nonfiction Book of the Year by the Book Publishers Association of Alberta and was named one of CBC's Best Nonfiction Books of the Year. Tracy's other written and visual work has appeared in Unearthed, ricepaper, G U E S T, Plenitude, Catapult, Toronto's NOW Weekly, and Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy. She has performed in Toronto's Word on The Street Festival, Tartan Turban Secret Readings, and was a resident artist at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in 2017.