My sister lyrics

Artist  : Tindersticks 
Song : My sister
 
Do you remember my sister? How many mistakes did
she make with those never blinking eyes? I
couldn't work it out. I swear she could read your
mind, your life, the depths of your soul at one
glance. Maybe she was stripping herself away,
saying

Here I am, this is me

I am yours and everything about me, everything
you see...

If only you look hard enough

I never could.

Our life was a pillow-fight. We'd stand there on
the quilt, our hands clenched ready. Her with her
milky teeth, so late for her age, and a Stanley
knife in her hand. She sliced the tyres on my
bike and I couldn't forgive her.

She went blind at the age of five. We'd stand at
the bedroom window and she'd get me to tell her
what I saw. I'd describe the houses opposite, the
little patch of grass next to the path, the gate
with its rotten hinges forever wedged open that
Dad was always going to fix. She'd stand there
quiet for a moment. I thought she was trying to
develop the images in her own head. Then she'd
say:

I can see little twinkly stars,

like Christmas tree lights in faraway windows.

Rings of brightly coloured rocks

floating around orange and mustard planets.

I can see huge tiger striped fishes

chasing tiny blue and yellow dashes,

all tails and fins and bubbles.

I'd look at the grey house opposite, and close
the curtains.

She burned down the house when she was ten. I was
away camping with the scouts. The fireman said
she'd been smoking in bed - the old story, I
thought. The cat and our mum died in the flames,
so Dad took us to stay with our Aunt in the
country. He went back to London to find us a new
house. We never saw him again.

On her thirteenth birthday she fell down the well
in our Aunt's garden and broke her head. She'd
been drinking heavily. On her recovery her sight
returned, a fluke of nature everyone said. That's
when she said she'd never blink again. I would
tell her when she started at me, with her eyes
wide and watery, that they reminded me of the
well she fell into. She liked this, it made her
laugh.

She moved in with a gym teacher when she was
fifteen, all muscles he was. He lost his job when
it all came out, and couldn't get another one. Not
in that kind of small town. Everybody knew
everyone else's business. My sister would hold
her head high, though. She said she was in love.
They were together for five years until one day
he lost his temper. He hit her over the back of
the neck with his bullworker. She lost the use of
the right side of her body. He got three years and
was out in fifteen months. We saw him a while
later, he was coaching a non-league football team
in a Cornwall seaside town. I don't think he
recognised her. My sister had put on a lot of
weight from being in a chair all the time. She'd
get me to stick pins and stub out cigarettes in
her right hand. She'd laugh like mad because it
didn't hurt. Her left hand was pretty good
though. We'd have arm wrestling matches, I'd have
to use both arms and she'd still beat me.

We buried her when she was 32. Me and my Aunt,
the vicar, and the man who dug the hole. She said
she didn't want to be cremated and wanted a cheap
coffin so the worms could get to her quickly. She
said she liked the idea of it, though I thought it
was because of what happened to the cat and our
mum.