Kathleen Frank
Don’t Press This Button
Shauna Friesen
Do not press this button. It cuts the moon in half. She is a dripping lemon.
Don’t open this door. I mean it. You are too young to withstand meeting her. Your sister. Born purple. Swollen as a plum. Bruised and still as fallen fruit. Are you sure you want to see her?
You shouldn’t try this lever, either. Stars will drop like fat figs to earth.
And if you undo this latch. If you stick your head outside to lick the sour, festering sky, you’ll be swallowing your canker sores for months.
I’m telling you. Not to do the calculations. Seven across, nine down. Sixty-three canister bulbs in the hospital’s funeral chapel, and when you finish counting you cry so hard in the chemical light you cannot breathe.
Why did you go and flick the tap. I tried to warn you. That you couldn’t drink this grief fast enough to keep it from rising over your ankles and knees.
Here. Unfold this instead. Your little sister, painted in silver sound, swimming in an amniotic sea. A girl. Your mother beams, and you gape in wonder at the ultrasound picture.
Try toggling back. To the time when diamonds grew from trees, when you could eat possibilities to pit and stem. When glitter nectar ran down your knuckles and your stomach was so full of the sparkle flesh you could pretend you were the one holding your sister safe in your belly.
Maybe better if you avoid clicking through these slides. These are the colors her eyes could have been, but you remember her now in magenta. Fingers and eyelids. Elbows angled wrong in the medical bassinet. Swollen and still as a peony. About to bloom.
Don’t bite down too hard on this, okay? You’re going to crack your teeth. You could suck on this amethyst like a butter-mint all day and it wouldn’t get any smaller.
Stop shaking that. Your mother says the words, palming tears in the mortuary drive-through. Your sister is dust in a polished wooden box, and when you flip her she makes a sound like an hourglass.
Don’t turn that knob over there. In that room, all the planets you pulled out of orbit for her are strung to her baby mobile.
Don’t spin this volume dial any higher. I’m begging you. You shouldn’t have to hear this. The bone-crunch of the sun’s ribs and radius every time horizon gives birth to her. But I can’t stop you. From listening ear to the clouds for morning’s first gasping breath. From feeling the wrist of each golden beam for her heartbeat.
Shauna Friesen (she/her) lives in Los Angeles, CA. Her words have been featured in Gone Lawn, Vestal Review, Variant Lit, Chestnut Review, Foglifter Journal, Bruiser Magazine and Flash Fiction Magazine, among others.