about small-town secrets
and portals to another world.
Now it’s like I’ve entered the portal
and found a different sister.
If she were a player on my team,
I’d find the words
to give her a pep talk,
reinforce the strengths
she possesses,
point out a weakness
on the other side’s defense,
and show her a way
to break through.
But recently, I’m not sure
she’s even on my same team.
Or if instead she’s simply
walked off the field,
because that’s what it feels like
not a teammate
or an opponent,
but a sister
who refuses
to play.
Row
“It’s not a competition,” I said.
“You don’t get to be the only one
who feels it. You don’t get to consume
all the sadness in the world.”
“Feels what?”
Ariana finally looked up.
“The steaming pile of shit
that is grief.”
“What do you want me
to say, Row?”
Ariana looked the same
as always in a lot of ways.
Like her round cheeks
were still holding on
to being a child,
the way that my body
did the same,
but there was something else
that I hadn’t really noticed.
If you looked at her
long enough,
her rounded face
would begin to fall,
the muscles strained
to a point where they decided
to give up.
I always thought that as sisters
we would be unchanging.
I thought that was the whole point.
That sisters were like baby blankets.
With you since the crib,
and even though colors may fade
and stitching unravels,
we would still hold
that same smell
of being a kid.
I guess I thought
that even as Ariana and I
grew older, grew bigger,
we didn’t have to change
for each other.
But that wasn’t happening.
Ariana was growing
each day
into a person
I didn’t know.
I love my sister, but
I wanted to feel
proud and inspired.
I wanted to share her
with everyone and no one.
But the Ariana
who was crouched on the floor
picking up shards
of a broken figurine
was someone I didn’t like,
someone with a cold, unfeeling heart,
a bristled soul layered in ice.
I didn’t know what she could say
to make it better,
because it wasn’t words
that I wanted.
It was action.
“What is wrong with you?
You’re better than this.”
Ariana
Even there in the bus station I can’t escape from it.
The reminders of death. A song is playing.
Alex’s song. The one about ghosts.
This song is following me, I swear. The way a refrain
gets stuck in your head and follows you
from room to room,
moment to moment,
maybe days on end.
Until it eventually fades.
“Your student ID,” a woman at the ticket counter
with a haggard face interrupts.
I am struck by the normalness of it all.
It’s just like the first time we all went to the grocery store
after Mom died to get milk and eggs and stuff.
The whole time, all I could think about was
that our mom had died
and nobody in there knew.
Nobody knew that this was our new normal.
I was surprised how easy
it was to exist as a faceless child.
A person that no one knew anything about.
But I remember having this feeling
that I wanted people to know.
I am the girl with the dead mother.
Standing in front of the ticket counter at the bus station,
it’s like that first time all over again.
When the woman behind the counter asks me again
for my student ID, I have this impulse
that I want her to know.
I am the girl with the dead mother.
I set the painting on the linoleum floor.
I unzip every pocket but can’t find my ID.
“Just give me an adult ticket,” I say.
I’m trying to be someone more.
The woman nods. “Bus boards in twenty minutes.”
Row
I stare into the empty living room
at a quiet couch, a lonely blanket,
and remember the time
a bird flew into this room.
Small with yellow and red feathers.
It flapped its wings frantically
and bounced from wall to wall.
Ariana and I were alone
with the bird.
“You left the door open,”
she said.
“For two seconds. I swear.”
I shut the door.
The bird flew smack
into a window and continued
to flap around, scared
like we were.
“What are you doing?
Open it back up!”
The bird pooped on a bookcase.
A white smear slid down
the wooden exterior.
A small splatter
hit the spine
of a book.
“A bird poops
every ten minutes,”
I said, as if it were
our call to action.
Ten minutes until
it poops again,
until Dad comes home,
until the bird flies
into something breakable.
Framed family photos.
Mom’s collection of figurines.
“I saw this in a movie,” Ariana said.
She handed me a corner of a blanket.
“What movie?”
“Does it matter?”
We unfurled the blanket like a flag
and held both ends
across the room,
trying to sweep the bird,
coax it closer to the door.
At first it just flew over us,
avoiding the blanket entirely.
But then, maybe it knew
that this strange environment
it landed in wasn’t home.
Maybe it missed
the trees and the wind
and the other birds.
Maybe it started to feel caged
flying from wall to wall.
Hitting the windows,