I took two pills and danced my way through Sunday swaying in the chapel. Life started here, she met dad in the basement by St. Marks stained glass votive. Bible study, 1956, two college kids in the basement of a church unable to tell cigarette smoke from incense. Fire in their psalms, tongues, and palms. Julie and I shared a moment there, half whispering prayers to a god you both deserted for the new lights in Missoula. We both left Montana, Julie and I, though we will always find it to be home. Sickly sweet small town kind of love. Everybody pours out of doors to head to the big things, weddings, funerals, baptisms. What they won’t tell you is how they peek out of windows for the little things, pregnancies, breakups, Lydia and Marie’s lavender garden. When Monday came, I shared a bed with my sister, huddled together as the greatest storm of our lives hit us at full force. Casserole dishes line the shelves of the fridges like plated gold participation trophies of our youth. They will remain, frozen in the fridge and in time, unrelenting kindness meant to soothe quiet tears given all too soon.

We broke all the plates, smashed the wedding china, hell is real and it is the sound of shattered glass and your sister’s sobs. I am the elder sister, I swore to protect you on a quiet summer night while you were still new—pink and pudgy with all the world ahead. I remember how you used to scream like the devil himself had given you the right. You cut your hands on her old gravy boat. I can see the blood beginning to pool on your wrist. I can’t find the bandages, I’m lost. This house has no healing.

When Tuesday came and sang its sweet eulogy, an epiphany, we sank her into the ground. Buried here on a cold summer night, unnatural as all the best things are. My sister is holding me, we are watching her sink, I think Julie is weeping. I cannot tell. There is little time for tears. There is a house to be packed and sold. A plane to catch. Life to return to outside of this town which only exists in blacktop heated, red-white-and-blue ice pop sticky memories where cicadas sang our lullabies. We will never come back to her again, not after this night. I heat us slices of casserole on paper plates given to us by Ms. Thomas down the block. She washed us off with her hose when we were small and dirty. Covered in garden mud and blackberry juice, with bees buzzing around our fingertips. I think plates are her attempt to hose off our sins. The third stair creeks, I hear you come down. She hated that stair. We eat in silence, stepping around porcelain shards. Neither of us can bear to turn on the sink, so we toss the good silver forks in the trash. I step on a piece of glass, I rip it out and shove a paper towel over it. Blood soaks through, I can feel the paper sticking to skin, moist and scarlett. Clotting will have to be healing for the time being.

– E.Martinez