Girl

By Daniela Chamorro Mantica

When I was five, I asked my mom for a sister.

My brother looked up from our dinosaur battle.

“What for?”

“Sister things.”

He scoffed, attacked my brontosaurus.

At seven, I asked again. “I have nobody to play with.”

“Your cousins?”

“Not every day.”

At nine, I locked myself away, befriended Hermione, Matilda, brunettes with wild thoughts, piles of books.

When I was ten, my sister was born. I was too old to play.

When I was eight, my mother cried in the bathroom, soaking blood with towels, crying because she’d ruined two and failed to give me what I asked.