Photo by Esad Hajdarevic (Vienna, Austria)

On the day your sister gets her first period, your uncle stands outside your bedroom window roasting corn on a rusted barbeque. You are six, seven maybe, and the agapanthus are purple, full, blooming. She chews her piece of double mint gum so hard that her tongue comes between that little space between her two front teeth. You sip a soft drink through a red and white striped straw. You aren’t allowed to have soft drinks. You believe her then, about where the blood came from, much like you believe certain things now, sort of. You help her wash the sheets with the last of your mother’s lavender detergent that she bought right before she died. “Don’t tell,” your sister says. But two weeks later, when you see tears on her cheeks as she flies through the air on her favorite tire swing, and you notice that the agapanthus out past your window are starting to wilt, you think that maybe you should have told. And when her skin starts to hang loosely from her cheeks like deflated birthday balloons you think that maybe you definitely should have told. But instead…instead, you just keep sinking your teeth into the red and white striped straw, the red and white striped straw of your soft drink, the red red blood on the white white sheets melting down the drain of a porcelain sink like droplets of massive red burning fire suns in pure white skies.