Swan Sisters

When it’s my sister’s turn to be crushed like so many garden beetles under Mother’s shoe, then, I get to bask in a little glitter. In my sanctuary, there are gauzy emerald scarves as makeshift curtains. I love the way the light turns green and dances against a rainbow apothecary of bottles near the window. Strewn amongst them, loose Murano millefiori beads from a broken bracelet. Suction stuck to the filmy barrier between me and the world I have yet to explore is a stained-glass creation I’m proud of, something I made at girl’s night at church, the empty cross weeping blood and roses. (Mother said, when I brought it home, that the flowers looked like lumps of chewed-up bubble-gum.) My prize poster is a makeup ad torn from a glossy magazine, featuring a bohemian beauty with pre-Raphaelite tresses and gobs of bright blue eyeshadow. I am a gypsy at heart, it reads. 

Mother loves my penchant for baubles and rhinestones, my creative flair, the idea that I will be a writer. To be a writer is what I want most of anything. When I am the good daughter, she shows me off to people in the supermarket, introducing me as her gypsy. “Laura is going to be an artist,” she gloats fiercely, and I glow. 

“Your sister has no personality,” she tells me now, sweeping into my room with a tumbler of cheap pink wine in one hand. “She conforms to every trend, to whatever her friends say is the cat’s meow. Thank God at least one of my children has a mind of her own.” She asks what I am working on today, and I swoon, feeling like I am already an important poet. I stutter nervously, stumbling over the words, trying to tell her I’m writing lyrics for a song. I don’t say that the song is about a teacher I can’t stop thinking about. Miss Morris. A bottle blonde with a kind and naked face and rings on every finger. In the song, I describe how her hands are slender and unsteady under the weight of them, elegant as small birds. 

I pick up one of the slim volumes stacked beside my bed, poetry signed out from the library. I want to share my world with my mother. The Fire Eaters. I want to tell her how Gwendolyn McEwen travelled to Egypt and Greece for inspiration, how she paints the deep well of her eyes with black kohl. 

Mother doesn’t even open the book before dropping it down on the desk. “Well,” she says emphatically, eyes shining. “Won’t Sophie be sick with jealousy when your song comes out on the radio!” She catches her reflection in the dresser mirror, leans closer, fiddles with her earrings. She squeezes my shoulder and kisses me, leaving a smear of raspberry lipstick on my neck. And in a swirl of Tabu and Youth Dew, she exits stage left.

Lorette C. Luzajic reads, writes, publishes, edits, and teaches flash fiction and prose poetry. Her work has been widely nominated, anthologized, taught in writing courses from Tennessee to Egypt, and translated into Urdu and Spanish. Two of her stories have been selected for Best Small Fictions anthologies. She is the founding editor of The Ekphrastic Review and The Mackinaw: a journal of prose poetry. 

A Song for Lorette