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 Photo by Sheilagh O'Leary When she was a child she played with imaginary kittens. She'd bring them to show you in carefully cupped palms- such a beautiful child.
Rosy Dawn, my mother called her, always had the light in her, like sun lifting gold amid pink drifts of cloud above the shining sea. She married a silent man- never uses two words when one will do. I remember him when he was a boy she says. We went to school together and I've known him all my life. He'd take my hand to help me up a hill, and whispered to me when my knickers accidentally flashed from beneath a too-short, hand-me-down skirt. I fell in love, she said. I don't think many people get that in their lives. As she watches him rise and leave the group of people laughing and talking round the table, wander off down the garden alone, she holds the sun off the horizon in the final moments of pansy-eyed dusk with all the tenacity of a mother for her last scratchy kitten.
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