My Little Sister
by Ken Wheatcroft-Pardue



teeters right on
the edge of an ornate fountain.
She'll catch them pollywogs, she damn sure will.

But just as she's about to scoop up
a school of them,
somehow she steps wrong and plops

right in the green, long-stagnant water.
Her head pops up fast, but even so
she's now coated

with a slimy film of green algae.
But worse, still, I,
or more precisely, my 9 year-old self,

points at her, laughing like some kind of you-know-what.
Oh, how she longs to dunk my head.
Give me a piece of my own medicine.

But then the tears come,
hot tears of embarrassment,
hot tears of shame,

down her cheeks falling,
even into the stagnant,
the stinking pool.





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