siblings raze they hadn't talked in a while. she called to tell him she was grounded for a week. her older sister had been freaking out. acting like an animal, she said. she suggested to the rest of the family that they put her food on a plate outside. let her eat out there like the dog she seemed to want to be. her father didn't find the joke funny. he smashed an apple into her head. it became applesauce. the older sister punched her in the face. she hit back and washed her hair. the older sister was grounded for a day and allowed to have a friend over. the younger one got a week and no visitors. that sister, the older one, watched her while she was on the phone, a vulture smelling blood. who are you talking to? she hissed. who? tell me. i'm talking to my friend. what friend? dana. she didn't buy it. she lifted the phone in the kitchen and listened. she heard the voice of their brother. older and deeper than before, but familiar as breathing. dana my fucking ass! a young boy named bradley was sitting on the living room floor, playing with his toys, putting on a silent play for an audience of unattended furniture. the older sister turned to her mother in the kitchen. mom! she's talking to her brother on the phone! the mother knew already. didn't care. the younger one who was talking to her brother left her room with the cordless phone. she approached the mother. can you please tell her not to swear when bradley is around? he's just a little kid. don't be a squealer, the mother said. you're already grounded. if gathering storm clouds had a sound, the sound would be her voice. she was deaf to reason. back in the relative safety of her bedroom, the younger one told her brother how the older one would invent things to tell on her for. she was never chastised for being a rat. can i call you after school while i'm grounded? she asked. sure, he said. the older one appeared in the doorway. she pulled up her shirt. she smiled. she extended two middle fingers to her younger sister, one held over each breast. i don't ever want to be a teenager, the younger one said. i want to stay my age. i don't want to be like her. you won't end up like that. how old were you when you moved out? i was thirteen. two years older than you are now. sometimes i don't feel like i'm a part of this family. i think i'm more like you. my sister tells me i look like a guy, because i look like you. i think maybe i'll move out too when i get older. she went into the other room again to ask the mother if she could visit her brother on saturday. maybe. we'll see how you are. someone else had to use the phone. she called back a little later. in the interval, her sister bit her with enough force to draw blood. she told her brother she still played the old keyboard he left behind sometimes. the older sister didn't like that. i was playing it downstairs one day, when she barged in and told me to stop, because it was yours. you don't even like my brother, i told her. you don't want to have anything to do with him. so what do you care? it's his keyboard. i'll play it if i want to. you're just like him, she said, really snotty. stubborn. you won't listen to what anyone else tells you. what did you say back? i said thanks. i take that as a compliment. he could hear the older sister and the mother arguing about something in the background. they sounded like the same person. 130623 ... unhinged they hadn't seen each other in too many years. (sometimes i forget i'm really the only one in the family to see him semi-regularly for the past nine years) both stubborn, both type a personalities, they argued over if he would see her when she was in town. but at the last second, he caved, and when she saw him again for the first time in years she was so happy that she cried. she took a picture of them together for me like i asked and texted it to me. i made it the wallpaper on my phone. their smiles are so wide, so real, a moment of genuine happiness digitally frozen in thousands of little pixels. every time i look at it, i smile too. every time i switch on my phone, it is the first thing i see. what time is it? my brother and sister smiling. do i have any messages? my brother and sister smiling. i'm bored on the bus. i should check blather. my brother and sister smiling. she resent it to me yesterday, for some reason forgetting that i already had it. i told her again that i made it the wallpaper on my phone. 'ur two best siblings!' i smiled again 130623 ... nr sometimes we rib on each other. my brother makes jokes i might be sensitive about with some, but not with him because there's been no trauma surrounding our sibling relationship and i know he's fully joking. we can usually co-exist pretty peacefully, whether we're paying attention to each other or not. my sister and i are close too, and we share a lot more with each other than my brother and i do. but because many years ago we weren't super close and didn't often see eye to eye (me being seven years older than her and pretty anti-drama, and her being a very dramatic teenager), sometimes i do get a bit worried when there's some ribbing or mild head-butting because of the past. but we've both learned to communicate better. with the loss of a parent, we've all become something different to each other. i don't think there's a name. my siblings-in-law get it too. 211129 ... nr my brother and sister have always been close, and i think she calls him more than me. they'd been talking about a gift we're all maybe getting my dad for christmas, and decided on one without keeping me posted. i asked that they do, and my brother said sure and apologized, but sometimes i wish i was in on family things ever. yet sometimes i don't. 211209 what's it to you? who go blather from