This Love

My nearly five-year-old
sister handed
me a colorful mess
of glue, dry beans
and magic marker.
“To Sayre,
Love, Meg”
it read,
with a backwards G.
She beamed so openly
with her missing tooth
as she watched me study it.
I tried to find recognizable
shapes
in the tangled creation
of her green and blue hands.
“That’s you!” she said,
poking a tiny finger
at the large, green blob
on the right.
“And that’s me.”
I smiled at her.
Holding back the laughter,
and unexplainable tears
that tried to flow
at the token of innocence
and love.
I wish things were
as they were then,
so simple.
When warmth came easily
and anger never visited,
when the blue
stick arms connecting us
still held
as strongly as our
clasped hands.