Be Quiet, The Fireworks — by Kasey Thornton

I finally told my very nice therapist about my very terrible older sister, who pushed me on the ground and smothered me with a blanket, hissing, shut up, shut up, be quiet you little, punctuating each word with digs of her nails. One time on the way to Florida, we drove straight through a tornado, or perhaps right alongside one, and we cowered in the backseat in the dark while our parents screamed at one another as to whether it was better to stop and let the storm overtake us or to keep driving and risk getting swept into it. Putting the pedal to the metal won out, so she put me in the floorboard and covered my head with a towel and told me the lighting was just fireworks. Remember, the fireworks, at the baseball game? And I said yes and at the house, she covered me hard until my sobs and whimpers drowned out the twister in the other room, the house shaking, the sound of us going to Hell—but me, blind, with my terrible older sister holding me in her terrible arms, covering my body with hers. Be quiet. Shut up. Shut up. Remember, the fireworks.

Kasey Thornton is the author of the novel Lord the One You Love is Sick and writes literary fiction about the culture of the American South with a focus on religion, family, mental illness, abuse, and grief. She earned her BA in English from Elon University in North Carolina, and attended both the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and North Carolina State University for her MFA in Fiction. Her creative work has been featured in the Masters Review, TJ Eckleberg Review, tinyjournal, Colonnades Literary & Art Journal, and Apeiron Review.

artwork by James Keul