Gamblers

By Yash Seyedbagheri

Mother and Dad were gamblers. They gambled fortunes, then my older sister Nancy’s collection of Nabokov. They gambled the grand piano, the typewriter Nancy bought me for my fourteenth birthday. They gambled until the house was bare, with asylum-like walls. They finally gambled my sister and me. My sister went with Mr. DiCenzo, Dad’s friend. I went with our Episcopal priest. We pleaded to be kept together, my sister trying to shield me. They refused, tearing us apart, coldly. One night, my sister rescued me. We tried to retrieve all we lost, but stopped. We knew when to fold.

              
“I write to haunt readers and myself. I’m a graduate of Colorado State’s MFA program in fiction, I consider myself a Romantic.” – the writer