MY SISTER MAKING DINNER

POETRY Erin Aube

The garlic reeked burned and bitter, and a hiss whispered with each drop of the tomatoes’ sweat that splashed the glowing coil. Noodles still raw and hard would crunch like kindling under feet between our teeth. The cheese somehow half melted

but the other half still frozen from its time in the broken refrigerator. Dinner was ready. The singed gray oven mitt being just out of reach — along with my sister’s best judgment —she grabbed the next best thing, an aquamarine bathroom hand towel doing double duty as a dish towel,

the blue-green a shade we sisters decided brought a splash of seaside to the valley in Tennessee, and most certainly, classed up the place. From the oven, along with the dish came the towel, blue-green now instantly wet with waves of red-orange flames. Dropping the dish— but not the towel —my sister began to spin. Fire chasing behind her, first running from the aquamarine then lengthening to overcome it. She had to have known better. Hearing the screams I came to the rescue. A fire extinguisher

being a non-essential in the apartment occupied by underprepared college students, I grabbed the next best thing, a staple in every good Tennessee home— White Lily flour. The towel now in the sink the flames momentarily shocked

by the dingy stainless steel, I bravely poured five pounds of all-purpose on the conflagration which choked and suffocated the flames, and which when mixed with the smoke, left an almost peaceful haze in the air, with two sisters emerging, looking less like firefighters

and more like mothers from a story book, wide-eyed and powdered sugar coated. Decades later I would text her. “The baby came early. All is well.” And a picture of a little face as red as flames with eyes as blue-green as a painting of the sea, framed and lovingly hung in a house

in a landlocked town. We’ve all been there. Fanning flames, giving life to fire, panicking or delighting with the climbing blaze. Spinning when we should be still. In spite of knowing better.