We shook out beetles from the roses into Grandma’s jelly jars. We loved them and they loved us. We believed. My sister, goddess of roses and love and I the deity of war and courage, giving them torn petals to eat or lie on, with yellow pollen for spice. Grandma had spared us seven jars for seven beetle nations ready for war, each jar with a slanted twig to climb. The slate path was littered with flowers, gravel, leaves, grass and our knees were dusty, scratched, green-smeared. They tried to fly, their metal wings flashing green, green, a semaphore beating against the hard transparent air.
Grandma watched from the back stoop in her flowered dress, her cane planted in a cloud of baby’s breath. She crushed sprigs of mint between her thumbs, the fragrance as heady as when she was a village girl, the glint of green and scent rising in the air. For lunch she served us steak sandwiches we couldn’t stomach, tough and leathery with the fat still on, what she had made for our uncles long ago when they came home hungry from the mill. My sister chewed and chewed while I hid mine in a napkin, a ball of gristle and gray meat shreds. Out back, she stooped, her cane a prop, while she overturned the jars, singing to the stunned beetles, go now, go, until they found the courage to fly away.
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Mary Grimm has had two books published, Left to Themselves (novel) and Stealing Time (story collection), and a number of flash pieces in places like Helen, The Citron Review, and Tiferet. Currently, she is working on a YA thriller. She teaches fiction writing at Case Western Reserve University.