I’m not saying that Dad
and Ariana don’t care.
It’s just sometimes I think they forget
how to listen
because after Mom died it was hard
to hear anything other than silence.
Row
The snow is a real killjoy.
Absolutely no one
wants to leave their crackling fire
or the warm cup of cocoa
or the raucous game of Monopoly
they’ve entered into with their siblings
to lace up their cleats
and tromp through the snow
for a pickup game of soccer.
Seriously, you’ll be fine.
You’re definitely going to make
the premier team.
Just take a day off
for once.
You’re obsessed, 24.
Twenty-four.
My number. My identity.
It’s what I’ve led them all to believe.
I am Twenty-four.
Not Row.
Not Ariana’s little sister.
Not a girl without a mother.
I’m a number.
A position.
A series of county
and state records.
And I’ve done nothing to correct them
because a large part of me wants to believe
that this is who I am.
A seriously talented,
seriously obsessed
soccer player
who is singularly focused
on the game,
on the win.
Except,
with Ariana gone
I know that’s not true,
not even close.
I am a person
who is scared,
who is empty,
and who is alone
without her family.
Ariana
You were robbed were the words
a classmate once told me in eighth grade.
We flipped through magazines her mother
still subscribed to. Mostly about home decor
and living your best life. We scrolled through our phones
looking at photos of people we didn’t know,
and then she asked me what my mom did “for a living.”
“Nothing. She died.”
That’s when she told me I was robbed. Like I hadn’t noticed.
Like anyone who is robbed wouldn’t notice that their purse
was yanked off their shoulder or that there’s broken glass
by the back door and the flat-screen is missing.
It wasn’t helpful to be reminded of this.
Robbed of all the things my mother
was supposed to teach me.
I could learn from the internet the difference
between menstrual cups, tampons, and pads.
I could learn from a Google search home remedies
on how to relieve cramps, and my questions about sex?
There were plenty of sources for that.
But what the internet lacked were any real lessons
on how to navigate this world as a young woman
who felt solely defined by her grief.
My classmate changed the subject to whether or not
I thought we were too young to date high schoolers.
“You should ask your mother,” I told her.
She shifted her body. Raised the magazine to her face,
and never invited me back to her house.
My grief makes people uncomfortable.
It reminds even adults that we’re all going to die.
That bad things really do happen to good people.
I am not a walking disease because my mother died.
I am not abnormal. I am not contagious.
I am a human with grief. Just like we all will be someday.
Because there is only one universal truth in this world.
That we and everyone around us will someday die,
and grief is all that remains in the aftermath.
Row
Snow,
I text Kennedy,
one of those friends
who is always down
for doing something.
Except soccer.
Because, as Kennedy puts it,
“My two left feet wouldn’t know
how to run down a field,
let alone kick a ball straight.”
“It’s not that hard,”
I’ve told her.
“It is for someone who has
no desire to play in the first place,”
she would always say in response.
Of course I know it snowed.
This house has windows.
They are used to see out into the world,
and sometimes reflections
of ourselves,
Kennedy writes back.
Deep,
I text.
She sends over a photo
of snow
through a window
with a faint reflection
of Kennedy
snapping a photo
of snow
through a window.
Meta, I respond.
But seriously.
I stopped by on Thursday
and the lights were on
but no one answered the door.
What’s going on over there?
Kennedy writes.
I thought about
writing something
meaningful,
maybe vulnerable.
People were real into
talking about being vulnerable.
I thought about sharing.
And then I send
an emoji
of a pineapple
and a snowman
and an upside-down
smiley face.
Friendships are like plants.
They require care and watering,
Kennedy responds.
I snap a photo
of the houseplant
named Earl.
Friends.
I know your stepmother
waters that, not you.
Ariana
Snow blankets the low, flat ground
where underneath maybe there is land
to sow seeds in or fields to play on.
Maybe it’s land where kids play baseball
or soccer or get lost in a corn maze.
I wonder if my sister is just now waking up,
if she’s looking out her window and contemplating
what clothes she could wear in order to still
play soccer in all this snow. Like there’s nothing
in her life that will stop her from getting out there on the field.
I want that depth of determination. I want to feel
like nothing can get in my way. I want to chase after something
the way Row chases after the ball.
I remember watching the way younger girls
follow my sister on the field with their eyes.
The way they’d startle and then cheer when Row
cuts a ball left and taps one, then two
into the goal.
I remember seeing their tiny hands gripping the fence
during the semifinals, noses peering through,
and wondering if they realized that this wasn’t normal.