By Meg Pokrass
There is nothing more joyful than hugging my sister, she is large but she is tiny and when my arms wrap around her shoulders, she laughs. There is nothing more joyful than my sister’s laugh. Her face is red from laughing and she starts to cry.
There is nothing sadder than hearing her start to cry. How her laughter turns to tears so quickly. Or is it the other way around. How she starts to laugh after crying, I can’t tell.
There is nothing more painful than the way it cycles. How, when I hug my sister, sometimes she doesn’t want it. Doesn’t want me to love her this much. There is nothing more painful than a sister who closes her door. Nothing more painful than sitting in front of her door like a dog.
There is nothing more hopeful than when her door opens. It is Christmas. She slips out of her dark room, she lights up the house.
“You’re back,” I want to say but she doesn’t want to be noticed. Doesn’t want to be back, or maybe she does.
I pretend I don’t worry about her, say look what’s on tonight. An old western. My sister loves old westerns, the horses and the hats, the mean men and their snakes. I pretend I don’t see her, and turn on the TV, hoping it will be a movie she loves.
Meg Pokrass has been published in numerous anthologies and journals including New England Review, Wigleaf, Electric Literature, Five Points, Plume, RATTLE, The Best Small Fictions 2025, and Flash Fiction America (W.W. Norton, 2023). She has published 10 books of fiction and prose poetry. Her new and selected collection First Law of Holes: New and Selected Stories is from Dzanc Books. Meg currently lives in the Scottish Highlands.
