Grin and Bear It by Martha Christina

My surviving sister tells me
she went alone to scatter
our older sister’s cremains
over the family plot where
our parents are buried, and
was surprised by a tiny angel
shining among the bits of
bone and ash; the pin
our mother gave our sister
as a birthday gift, years ago.

She pressed it into the soil
above our mother’s grave,
and left it there.

We are half a continent apart,
connected by FaceTime on phones
neither Alexander Graham Bell
nor our parents would recognize.
A toast, my sister suggests, and we
raise our glasses, hers in Indiana,
mine in Rhode Island. Here’s to
a better rest of the day, she says,
and let’s grin and bear it.



Martha Christina is a frequent contributor to Brevities. Longer work appears in Innisfree Poetry Journal, Naugatuck River Review, earlier postings of Red Eft Review, and most recently in Star 82 Review, Crab Orchard Review, and Tiny Seed Literary Journal's Pollinator Project. She has published two collections: Staying Found (Fleur-de-lis Press) and Against Detachment (Pecan Grove Press).