It's Still Life

25 of 27: Glintmere – The Hesitant Harmony:
A Moment of Hesitant Harmony: a road trip with my sister

My sister drove with a headmistress’s composure, the silence between us taut as piano wire — until she muttered, low and dry, “You always sold more Girl Scout cookies to Mr. Murray than I did,” and I answered with a slow release of breath, and a quiet, irrepressible grin.

Between dust-throated towns, the Snake River slid beside the blacktop road, tranquil as a held breath, moving through spice-coloured cliffs like a rumour of peace neither of us dared break.

And then Paul Simon slipped through the speakers — a restless sprite in the dashboard, poking the quiet between us with a bridge of chords and half-finished confessions.

When the lyric a short little span of attention glinted between us, she cut a glance my way, rock-sure as scripture, and said, “That’s a penis joke,”— and the car nearly swerved with the weight of our laughter, sudden and unrefined, as we sang it wrong in all the right ways.

Long after, the road trip lingered in my mouth — a singular, shimmering knowing: I am the woman who has learned to harmonise with her own ghost.

And Felreil, from the backseat no one occupied, whispered: “Not all harmony endures — but even Glintmere can carry you the length of a river.”

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Written for Denise’s Six Sentence Story including the word “spice”.  Some artwork is created using Midjourney AI. Imagery and poems/prose ©Misky 2006-2025.