An Online Literary Journal for Poetry and Flash

Tag: sisters

How Light Travels

Poetry by Sheila Dietz

For Christina (1956-2017)

In this picture it’s Christmas morning
and we’re opening presents. Carl, five,
looks away from the camera at Mary
who is out of view. He holds a bag—
red fabric tied at one end
with gold ribbon. I, the oldest,
maybe ten, am trying to pull
a fat gold ribbon from a gift wrapped
in white froth. I wear a shy
smile for the camera
which has caught me in my pajamas—
the red ones with a hole in the heel.

And you, baby sister, your wild,
curly hair catching the light,
cozy in your faded red nightgown
with white buttons, are lifting your face
to the person taking the picture.

One hand is open in your lap,
fingers splayed, and still,
two of its fingers held fast
by the other hand—a nascent
reticence that has not yet reached
your mouth, which, open in a wide smile,
reveals pure joy while the light
in your gold flecked eyes
reflects a gold ornament
dangling from a nearby branch.

Oh, Christina,
how can it be that I did not see you
until just now?


Sheila Dietz also writes as Sheila Bonenberger. She holds an MFA from Vermont College, and poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Antioch Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Wrath-Bearing Tree, Denver Quarterly and The Massachusetts Review, among others. Most recently her work appeared in the 2023 One Page Poetry anthology.

Way Back When

Nonfiction by Meredith Escudier

My little sister is seven, bundled up in a brown, corduroy car coat. I am nine, sporting a pair of orange polka-dotted pedal pushers and feeling fairly fleet-footed in my canvas Keds. Together we are walking home at dusk from our neighbor’s house where we have enjoyed yet another game of Chinese checkers.

“Can we play orphans?” she asks. Orphans. It’s a familiar game of ours, influenced by the thrill of childhood literature – The Boxcar Children or Oliver Twist or any number of hair-raising fairy tales that filled our impressionable psyches. According to the game’s unspoken rules, we must identify a house friendly enough to ask its current residents to take us in – two bedraggled sisters who have only recently escaped from the workhouse.

Perhaps in our mind’s eye, we are barefoot, ragged, dirty, but also surely sweet-faced, hopeful, and plucky. After some faux-hesitation, we will, of course, choose our own house – what else? –  but the exercise allows us to flirt momentarily with independence and adventure, only to be flooded by a warm, familiar security afterwards. Our chosen scenario, as usual, unfolds with a practiced, codified dialog:

“How about this one?” she suggests, as we walk past a large corner house.

“No, too dark,” I respond on cue, shaking my head vigorously as we march along.

“Then this one?” She points to a house whose front lawn has recently been edged. A forgotten rubber ball is wedged between a planter box and a picket fence. I appear to inspect her choice before disqualifying it with a “Naah,” aligning myself perfectly with the unwritten script. “Not cozy enough,” I announce.

“Then how about this cute little house? It looks sort of friendly,” she says, tacking on a hopeful argument for good measure. Hmm, I take a look. She could be right. Among the cookie-cutter post-war housing that went up fast in the Fifties and that provided the parents of baby boomers a decent, if not charming, place to live, this house – with its ruby red front porch and generic cement driveway – just seemed to stand out. Well, at least to us.

We stop and peer in, evaluating the odds, wondering if this family might adopt our lonesome selves. Will they show mercy? Human kindness? Would they like the addition of two beseeching little girls around the dinner table tonight? I notice the glow from the light in the kitchen and guess at our older sister studiously setting the table, carefully placing our father’s milk glass at the helm. “Yes,” I agree companionably as we turn into our own comfortable driveway and trot up the front steps. Out back, between the clothesline and the dangling tether ball, is a likeness of our handprints, marking the day when three sisters leaned down and opened their hands, stretching and splaying their fingers wide as they pressed their palms into fresh cement.


Meredith Escudier has lived in France for over 35 years, teaching, translating, raising a family and writing. She is the author of three books, most recently, a food memoir, The Taste of Forever, an affectionate examination of home cooks that features an American mother and a French husband.

Sweeter Than Your Name 

Fiction by Josephine Greenland

She can taste them as she puts the jars on the shelf. Plush blueberries, sweetened with sugar, exploding on her tongue like a thousand desserts. Her best batch yet, too good to be eaten, too good for the stale biscuits on the table. They could belong in a shop, in those shiny glass jars—gherkin jars she waited for the family to finish. Washed and scrubbed, to erase the brine residue. Polished so the glass can be used as a mirror. Labelled and dated, Blueberries by Ruth, July 1932, in a longhand rivalling her father’s.

‘Aren’t you done yet?’

Another face in the glass, battling her for room. Blonde and bright where she is red-haired and dull.

Mary, apple of father’s eye. Faultless, no matter what she does. ‘You promised you’d play with us.’

Us. Mary and the merchant’s daughter, who eats store-bought jam with a silver spoon, who makes Mary forget where she belongs. Ruth motions around her. ‘I have to clean up.’

‘Then let me taste!’

‘I’m saving the jam.’

‘Why?’

Because of the sigh of an empty purse. The smoke and liquor on father’s breath. The snatching of their savings when he wants more. The curses, the bruises. The suffering no mother should endure.

Ruth goes to the sink. ‘Because butter and cheese are running low.’ Mary’s been away too long, she wouldn’t understand why they can’t buy more. ‘And mother loves it.’

Mary’s eyes flash. ‘I bet father hates it.’ She edges up to the cupboard. ‘No one cares about your jam.’

Like a bird taking flight, she leaps and grabs two jars. Empties them out the window as Ruth rushes to pin her down. Their screams, like their bodies, twisting round each other.

And swarming over the jam outside, the ants.


Josephine Greenland is a Swedish-British writer from Eskilstuna, Sweden, with an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Birmingham. Her debut novel, Embers, was published by Unbound in 2021. She has won and been shortlisted in five writing contests, and had work published in various online and print magazines. 

© 2024 The Bluebird Word

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑