Do It Again

By Kat Moore

Faster, faster, I scream as the golf cart barrels down the hill, my sister, 11, in the driver’s seat, me, only 6, small, gripping the metal edges of the passenger’s side, laughter rumbling out from my mouth as the cart shoots a corner, raises up on one side and glides tilted for a moment, I reach out to my sister, with her left hand, she clasps my right hand, and then the cart slams back onto the asphalt, our father running behind us on the dark narrow road that runs the length of the golf course, the golfers, the sandboxes, the ponds that we pretend have alligators, the trees that have coyotes and deer, the colors green and brown blur like an impressionist painting, which I don’t yet know about, but I know my sister, the way she impresses on me, her eyes large, her mouth open, I think she is laughing, but she may be screaming, she has lost control of the golf cart, but I believe in her, soon we will be home and she will read to me, show me the lines in the book for me to read aloud to her, to practice the words I don’t know, then we will watch movies, of little girls, like Helen Slater as Billie Jean in her short hair to look like St Joan of Arc, like Molly Ringwald as Andie in her pretty pink, who move faster faster than the speed of light, always trying to catch their light, my sister’s light, I believe in her to keep us safe, to steer the golf cart back to our parents, for her foot to find the brake, and she does, she always does, and the cart slows, her hand on the wheel, her right leg stretching, pushing down on the brake, and we stop, we laugh, and I clap my hands, Do it again, the way now, a lifetime later, on June 25th, 2022, approaching my mid-forties, my sister not yet fifty, I wish we could do it again, relive the life I had with my sister before a wreck took her from me, do it again, I pray, days I sit here by her side, remembering, remembering for her, asking her to wake-up now, the monitors go silent, now her breath stops, now I kiss her face and clasp our hands together one last time.

Kat Moore has essays in/forthcoming from Image, Reed, Bellevue Literary Review, Brevity, and more.

Art by Debi Babb.