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.