My Sister Plays Minecraft a Week Before her 17th Birthday
by Isabelle Correa
I’m getting over you / over you
someone sings from her cell phone
as the controller clicks, the sound
of thought birthing action. She’s trying
to climb a roof in Survival Mode which means
she can die. Like regular life, she tells me.
Zombies can eat you if there are zombies.
Flight is not possible. Hunger will kill you.
A bowl of yesterday's pasta in my hand,
I watch her adventure unfold in pixelated
efforts. I don’t know the words to the song
she sings along to. I don’t know this game.
I know each morning while I sleep she cooks
herself bacon and eggs in my kitchen, now our
kitchen, 7000 miles from our hometown. When
I wonder if I’m a bad mother I remind myself
that’s not what I am. She already has two:
by birth and adoption—the schizophrenic
and the fundamentalist, her vicissitudes
bookended between a locked room without
food and Proverbs 22:15 inscribed on one
side of a rod. She switches from Survival
Mode to Creative, shows me how to build. We don’t
unearth too much. Instead I ask her everything
else: did you do your homework? Who is your
crush? Is your room clean? Have you eaten?
And she answers, yes, no one yet, almost, I will.
Isabelle Correa is from Washington and lives in Vietnam. Her writing can be found in Trampset, Maudlin House, Pank, and others. She really loves her dogs. Follow her on Twitter @IsabelleJCorrea.