Luster

Web and Media Editor Bess Winter Kosinec: Everything goes unspoken in this compelling snapshot of a family, set to the tune of B-flat. This is one that bears rereading many times over for its many layers of nuance and longing.

Listen to Theodore read “Luster”:

Luster

In hopes of making a living, my eleven-year-old sister takes up the trumpet and stops caring about anything else. I send her pictures of everything in nature—stars, flowers, litter—all the things I can afford, and everything I cannot help but want. She responds with videos of her playing a B-flat, her finger on the second vowel. Wherever she is, there is rain. A terrier barking. My father’s golden shout. The noises her instrument makes smother everything as though she were trying to place a tourniquet around feeling. We don’t talk at all about ourselves, or our family, about my leaving, or the things in her life I have missed. She turns the camera on and off wordlessly and even this feels quieter than usual.