My sister was a ghost figures in pastel, swimming with the shoals in a plastic wading pool. My mother celebrated her primitive nature, that tempestuous spirit, while I bit my lips to draw blood. I balanced on the sawhorse in our narrow backyard, topography of cracked cement, taut clotheslines tethered to ancient and rusting poles and a salvaged swing set that lifted out of the ground when we swung. Get down! My mother yelled, while I teetered on the legs like stilts, the bravest we all knew I would ever be. My brother, out of necessity, engaged in adaptive behavior, biting his nails to nubs, his freeze dried heart priming to step over the some imaginary threshold. A temporary residence, perhaps, but one we would all dip our toe into eventually: dangerous resilience from the nagging recommendations that would haunt us because they sounded like commands. If we could find it, we knew there was a blueprint to help us live, but only if we didn’t take it to heart.
Siblings, 1972
Michelle Reale is the author of several poetry and flash collections, including Season of Subtraction (Bordighera Press, 2019) and Blood Memory (Idea Press), and In the Year of Hurricane Agnes (Alien Buddha Press). She is the Founding and Managing Editor for both OVUNQUE SIAMO: New Italian-American Writing and The Red Fern Review.