By Cathy Ulrich
Your sister gets abducted by aliens. Your sister goes to the moon. She goes to Jupiter, Venus, Mars, planets unnamed by human mouths. She learns to speak a thousand alien tongues, sees the rise of a thousand different suns. She gets caught in a tractor beam, chin all tilted up, fingers all splayed out, looking like that time she sang Tomorrow in the Spring Follies at school, red-wigged and spotlighted, the sun’ll come out. You remember how she held the wig under the flat of her hand when she bowed, so it wouldn’t fall off. You remember how she practiced at your mother’s piano, fingers plunking — your mother called it plunking — at the keys. You remember she thought the other kids might laugh after she’d done that, sung her heart out, like your mother said, but they clapped politely, and she smiled, smiled, smiled.
You remember your sister’s smile.
Your sister gets pulled away into the sky, into the bowels of a shining alien ship. Your sister goes away on their spaceship and she never comes back.
This is what happens.
Cathy Ulrich’s favorite song from Annie is actually “It’s the Hard-Knock Life.” Her work has been published in various journals, including Clock House, trampset and Centaur Lit.
MoonPark Review 