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Found this (it's a poem):
Her Name was Madge
Rum-balls and marzipan
announced her appearance
every Christmas
in those far-away tinselly days
when I was small.
Her name was Madge.
(the term spinster never suited a soul so well)
Stooped and bony,
she had long hair coiled up on top
and ankles that could have turned men's heads.
She grew lily of the valley
in her garden
‘on the west side with just a hint of the sun’.
She adored me.
Minded me often.
Reminded me
of the need for family.
(even though we weren’t really hers)
She lived alone in the big house.
Nursed both parents
into their graves, apparently.
Mum said ‘he’ had been a tyrant.
‘Drove away the only gentleman friend she ever had’.
Later she gave me recipes
penned in her perfect copperplate
‘It’s the J nib that makes the difference’.
I recall the story she told each year
about the only time I saw her with her hair down.
‘Madge… (she liked me to call her that)
You look just like a girl -
from the back.’
She died of cancer in the end.
Left all her money to her proper family -
the ones who never bothered with her.
Alison Cassidy
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