12.17.2008

Anastasia

by K.C. Ball

She is my younger sister and she talks to me; always has.

When I was twelve, she told me how to talk to girls, told me all the words she knew they loved to hear; and in return, asked only that each time I spoke her words, they were the truth.

Her giggles taught me how to laugh at all the world’s absurdities; most of all, my own.

She cheered for me, the night I earned my bachelor’s degree and the first afternoon I brought home a real paycheck; cried with me the morning after I retired.

I was steadied by her words, the day I said “I do,” and she cooed with me, outside the glass, when both my sons was born.

Somehow I made it through the nights, when my sweet Miriam passed on, because my sister whispered honest comfort in my ear from far away.

She talks to me, she always has, the younger sister I have never seen; my fraternal twin, who would not wait for birth and snuck away to God, behind me, as I squirmed into the world.

And now she says that today we will be together once again.

© 2008 K.C. Ball
Original fiction debuting at Residential Aliens.
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K.C. Ball is a retired newspaper reporter and media relations coordinator, living in Seattle; but just recently began writing fiction full-time. Ball's stories have been published in Boston Literary Magazine, Every Day Fiction, Fear & Trembling, Morpheus Tales, Murky Depths, Static Movement and A Thousand Faces. You can catch more of K.C. Ball at Now Playing In Seattle.