Untitled, but certainly not short.

Hello internet darlings, I do apologize for my absence last week. I also apologize for subjecting you to this piece of my own work.

I heard them

say once that there was a

princess who could neither sink

nor cry and she was loved by most

and hated by some and

cursed by a very few.

And I think

about how I, who can both

sink and cry and quite often

do both am loved by some

and hated by others as I sit

under the desk in my sister’s

room and tell her about the

life-cycles of lichens.

which

is a topic she does not find so

interesting as the fairy tales I told her

when she was a baby and would

sit on top of my blue cotton colored

pillows and ask me for stories

with sad middles

and happy endings and a witch and

maybe even a princess and, if I

was feeling adventurous, an ocean

or a pond if I was not.

And she

would take the ends of my braids,

clutching them in sweaty palms if

I put a witch in the story, twisting

them between pink-lacquered

nails if I told her of a princess

and giving sharp, expectant

tugs when I talked about lichen.

Inevitably my sister,

light of my life, will fall asleep

and I will lift her gently in my arms

and carry her soft frame to bed,

and inevitably she will stir and

ask me if she can sink, and of course

I will say not today.