Swordmaster

I was the age when your parents give you and your siblings all the same haircut. The same age when you first discover the joy of smashing dandelions, a formative time for any child. I preferred clapping my hands around each flower, prying my sweaty palms apart, slow as a secret, to reveal each white stalk I caught. My sister, however, with our bowl cut bangs shifting with effort, preferred the stick. She was a swordmaster, a force with dead branches, a miracle to me. In a matter of seconds, twenty dandelions decapitated with eight-year-old grace. Their lithe, skinny green bodies fell to the earth as their soft skulls filled the air like snow on a summer afternoon.