My sister sells her body when she hits middle age. Ovaries first. She sprinkles wildflower seeds in the empty spaces, waters them until they sprout.
Her breasts go next and fetch a handsome price despite the 47-year-old droop.
She absconds to Europe with the profits, refusing to return even when her eldest is arrested for stealing narcotics from his grandmother’s medicine cabinet. Small shrubberies bloom in her breast space with small white blossoms.
In Berlin, she sells her liver, her left kidney, her spleen. She buys a castle in Scotland and haunts it like an ancient queen, polishing suits of armor she collects like lovers. Wisteria seeps through her skin, purples itself into the walls of the castle, snakes to the ground, twines through my sister's chains.
Come home, her youngest implores in letter after letter which my sister ignores. The children turn to me. Go get her, they demand, caustic bird voices scratching over me like pokey little claws leaving pinpricks kisses up my arms and neck.
My sister sells her hair, her maternal instincts, her fingertips. She’s wealthy now. But I need nothing, she tells me on the phone, and she collects experiences and plants, and she sells her feet because her legs have grown roots that force into the castle walls, crumbling stone.
Make her come home, her children cry.
She already is, I tell them, and I make an appointment to sell myself, too.
Finnian’s work appears in Writer’s Digest, Geist, Pulp Literature, CBC books, and more. They’ve had three novellas-in-flash published, including the recent Redshirts Sometimes Survive—a love letter to Star Trek. Finnian lives in British Columbia with their wife and several demanding houseplants.
No comments:
Post a Comment