I lost my sister
and I found her ashes.

I know she is lighter
I know she has lightened

*

Take her, my nephew said,
as if it was urgent.
So I did. I held her.
I held the urgency
and the urn.

From a small woman
has come three grown men.

*

She was safe in the urn
as I was safe in her house,
the one on stilts amongst palms
that she loved as if her life
in the end
depended on it.

She depended on its beauty
as she depended on the love
that urged us up the outdoor stairs into her room.

*

I held the urn against me
as if my sister was unborn
and walked with her
on the closed-in verandah
of her last worldly home.

Everything surprised me.
My sister was in pieces.
She was at our disposal.

I turned into a kuia
and filled the house
with the echo
and groundswell of grief.

We knew by then
that from a small woman
can come a tall order.

She’d been giving us a way to live
while she was dying:

acceptance, courage, faith,
love for one another,
the fine, hard-earned story.

*

The photograph of a grandchild
and some small stones
were what she held on to
while she was dying.

She was letting us let her
turn light and boundless

so that a smile of completion
could fall and truly settle
on her human face