Snowglobes

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Ephraim shifted in his seat, eyes trailing the rim of the cold cup of coffee wrapped around his hands. “Yeah, I know... I’ll go back in.” He seemed to speak from some distance, fingers circling the rim, “I... uh... yeah - nevermind.”

“Hmm?” Mika picked apart Ephraim’s winter getup, the raggedness of it all, the despair and sunken hollowness of his eye sockets, and the glass cheekbones laid over by skin that wasn’t so different from wooden pallets draped over by a tarp. It was a far cry from the once happy little kid she grew up with, cheeks plump from their mother’s weekly apple pie, and eyes wide as they’d study different kinds of leaves in the backyard, made comically even wider from the thick pair of glasses he had to wear.

“You promised me Eef.” Her voice was as reedy as an oboe, the notes waltzed in the fleeting coffee-stained air.

“I know... I uh...” Ephraim swallowed, “I just-”

“You know you can tell me anything-”

“I need to borrow some money.” He punctuated it with a cough, and for the first time since he came back, he looked at her in the eyes. He saw his older sister clearly now, the wrinkles and lines that hug around the corners of her mouth; those solemn, calm eyes, holding in them suns that could thaw frozen packs of peas stuck at the very back of the freezer; and as instant as the cough was drowned out by the hum of the radiator, the heat in her eyes froze over, and held in them, twin dead suns.

“Fucking Christ Ephraim. What. Just for one last hit? Like the last time? Huh?” She spat the words out like brown chunks of phlegm.

He retracted his gaze, like a shivering hedgehog trying to find safety and warmth having seen some shadow in the periphery “No nothing like that, just-”

She stood up now, the chair shrieked against the hardwood floor and shaved the top of Ephraim’s teeth “And here I thought you came back to unfuck the-.” She shook her head, smiling, as if realizing she was the punchline of a cosmic joke before coming to terms of her lonesome role in this crowded world, nodding in agreement. “You know... Dave was right.” She beamed at him, eyes gripping bone “Should never had given you a chance.”

Time seemed to choke the two siblings, holding them in place, holding them in this cold red bricked apartment buried in a pile of snow by December blizzards, snowflakes batting against the window like clouds of moths in the dead of a humid summer night. Mika realized, in this newfound ambience, where the radiator’s hum and the shush of the winter outside forms the base, and the tick of their mother’s clock plods its steps rhythmically on this earthy, cloudy, ground, that she could never take back what she said, and that she doesn’t even know if she meant it. The forlorn soundscape pitted a vacuum inside deep in their bowels, a black hole sucking everything up and turning gravity upside down.

Mika’s throat constricted, clamping down the heavy bone rushing out in response to what she said “I’m not stupid... Ephraim,” she doubled down, in hopes to help hold whatever was coming out. “I’m not fucked in the head like the people you hang-”

“Stop.” He seethed through gritted teeth.

“What?”

“I just said... just stop alright?” Ephraim pleaded as he squatted on the chair, bony knees higher than his chin, arms tightly clasped around his legs, twig limbs all bundled up for heat.

When she saw him in the driveway that morning, images of a scarecrow flared in her mind; the highschool hoodie hung on him like he was a coat rack in a dark corner of a restaurant, unseen and forgotten until needed; cargo pants wrinkled and slacked, forming waves forever stuck receding; but she shut these thoughts out and the despair and pity and sadness and sorrow that came flooding with it, and welcomed him with open arms - because they were related by blood, because that’s what family’s supposed to do.

But now, as he squats on top of the chair, his paleness exaggerated by the dreamy white winter streaming shafts of heaven through the window, she can’t help but be reminded of that scarecrow again. And with that, the cocktail of emotions came flooding back in, finally pushing out the bone lodged in her throat. Tears streaked down, and she felt them, and she let them tear their way through her tundra skin, paving a wet path down her cheekbones to her chin, before they jumped to their doom, their carcass splayed on the dusty hardwood floor.

Regret, guilt, sorrow, and everything that makes people people lied in the guts and remains of the ocean tears. All the could’ves and should’nt haves, the amber lit memories of Dad visiting, Ephraim’s saucer eyes as that blue butterfly lands on his nose, and the expectations and hopes and the hopeless dreams came crashing down.

She wiped the snot and tears, and sniffed the remains back in, blinking away the tears, hopelessly. “Ah... Jesus...” Her words came out exhausted and was cleaved in half by the chair against wood as she sat back down, slumped over the chair like a jacket. “I... You know I love you right?”

Ephraim nodded, still looking like a nervous wild dog waiting for an attack.

“And... I- uh...” Mika cleared her throat, eyes trailing the rim of the cold cup of coffee wrapped around her hands, “I know you can... umm... you can do this. Just get in, and get clean.” She seemed to speak from some distance, fingers circling the stained rim. “Do all that meditation stuff I’ve been telling you about. Works you know? I know it sounds stupid, breathing and all...” She chuckled

“Hmhm.”

Time grabbed them again. Both siblings looked at opposite directions, avoiding any semblance of each other. Mika’s eyes followed the balletic snow performing pirouettes outside, wondering what else she could have done, remembering their mother.

“I’m going to be gone for a while hon’.” She croaked on the bed, the smell of clear biting alcohol singing the air, dancing with the cold steel. “You’re... you have to take care of him okay? Dad’s going to help out a bit... shh...shh... don’t cry, I promise I’ll be back alright?”

Ephraim studied the dead snowglobe, unshaken and still, wondering why he’s here, remembering their father.

“Go on now, go back inside... it’s just some man.” He said, ushering a child back inside the house. “I’m sorry, okay? Look... Jessie’s going to come back - I’ll send you the money... just... just don’t come back.” Their father’s eyes slipped through the curtains, sharing the same hue.

“Snowglobes don’t shake on their own.”

“What?”

“Just... some song I heard. I was walking through downtown last night. Heard it outside Bardo.”

“Jesus. That place is still open?”

“Right?”

Their lips mirrored each other, splintered into infinity, cracked, and broken, as they both tried to smile before slumping back down to tired lips.

“What’s the money for Eef?”

“Loose ends. I owe some-”

“How much?”

A pause hung, wings flapped like rifle shots outside, circling the sky. “Two grand.”

She shook her head and sighed. “When do you need it?”

“Whenever-”

“Alright. I’ll- I’ll check around our savings... You staying by the Marble right?”

“Yeah.”

“I can give you a hundred right now... I’ll drop the rest later.”

“It’s yeah... that’s okay. Thanks. I’ll pay you back-”

A hand stopped Ephraim’s words. “Eef. Just...” She turned around to check the time. “You should leave. Dave’s coming home in a bit. I’ll... yeah...”

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