Christmases Without Margaret

My sister Margaret is gone.
And in the end, I will have spent
All my Christmases without her.
During her third year of being a teen,
She married and left our humble home.
I was the tender age of five—
Too young to recollect any of the details.
In essence, it's as if those five years did not exist,
Since they are indeed absent from my memory
And so the mighty gates to my early past
Are bolted shut—never to be released again.
Soon after marriage, the words "with child" were born,
So that by the time Margaret was twenty-three,
She was the devoted mother of five,
The mother of children with whom she would
Celebrate all her remaining Christmases,
In a small village just down the snow-covered lane
From the place I now call home.

©2014 by David Lee Thompson