This chapbook grew out of the poem, “Lemons,” first published in Frozen Sea. It’s a little fictional account of a narrator losing their little sister, and after writing it I found myself wanting to continue exploring this fragile relationship between siblings.
I’ve always found this familial connection interesting, reflecting on my own experiences with my siblings, and just thinking about the idea of what it really means to be siblings. How can children grow up in the same household, yet have completely different childhoods? What truly keeps siblings together? How do they reflect each other’s personalities? How would siblings relate to each other if they were strangers? Siblings are sort of forced together as children without any choice in the matter. How does that impact their relationship? Would siblings choose each other as adults?
I didn’t necessarily want to answer these questions in my poems, but rather evoke these ideas through imagery and feeling. It was also fun to play around with different lines and forms, which I hadn’t done much before since I had mainly written prose poems. Some of the poems also came from much longer pieces of flash fiction that I felt weren’t really working, but ended up feeling much more impactful as tiny poems.
I hope this chapbook ends up resonating with a wide range of people, not just those who have siblings, but also people who think about the weird nature of friendships, found family, and invisible bonds.
Elena Zhang is a Chinese American writer and mother living in Chicago. She is the author of the micro-chapbook The Moon, My Heart (tiny wren lit, 2025) and My Little Sister (above/ground press, 2026), and her work can be found in HAD, Wigleaf, and X-R-A-Y, among other publications. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, and was selected for Best Microfiction 2024, 2025, and 2026.
