A twins’ bedroom in 2000. The girls are six, as even as the year and the room. Their mother Cynthia Rose, having duplicated herself, named them Cyn and Rosie: Rosie for a rosier future and Cyn as a middle finger to a preachy grandfather.
Cyn’s and Rosie’s twin beds have unwashed sheets and flat pillows and shelves above with two dusty china dolls. There are two windows with curtains of divorce-tossed sailboats hiding a brick wall hit not long after. Between the beds is a desk of plywood on boxes, two rickety chairs dumpster-dived. On the ceiling, mouldy water stains. Summer clouds and cotton candy in Rosie’s imagination, but not in Cyn’s. She sees nothing. Rosie conjures her up a bunny.
The twins’ bedroom in 2009 at fifteen. An odd number. Rosie has become Snake. Cyn is still Cyn and the beds still twin. Gone—sister-stolen, smack-sold—are the dolls. The bridge is now out between the beds and the girls, the plywood desk lying cracked on the floor. The weaker chair is at a window, having angrier things to do than see shit in ceiling stains for a sister. Still, one new thing: a hole in the drywall. Cyn punched because Snake’s cold flat pillow no longer hurts enough.
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Karen Walker (she/her) writes short in a low basement in Ontario, Canada. Her most recent work is in Sage Cigarettes, Misery Tourism, Centaur, Cosmorama, The Hooghley Review, Overheard, and Bending Genres. @MeKawalker883