Synkroniciti is delighted to welcome back poet Shannon Frost Greenstein of Pennsylvania, who first appeared in our Dreams issue, with her new piece, “Her Brother’s Keeper…Or, Morality as Posited by Philosopher T.M. Scanlon’s Seminal 1998 Essay ‘What We Owe to Each Other.’” In this thoughtful and unflinching work, Shannon examines the ethics of family responsibility and the profound moral terrain of caring for siblings with developmental challenges.
Her son is autistic, and she writes candidly about the future—about the likelihood that responsibility for his care will one day pass to his sister and her husband’s discomfort with placing such a burden upon their daughter. She wrestles with the tension between fairness and duty, articulating a belief in the primacy of family bonds:
“And I cannot figure out how to articulate my conviction/ that family should always take priority; that blood is the strongest element of them all./ I know it is not fair our daughter will inherit this burden/ but neither is it fair her brother has to endure a disability in the first place./ I believe we are each dealt a poker hand at birth,/ and our duty in this world is to help one another manage all of those cards.”
What emerges is a reasoned, compassionate argument for the enduring strength of kinship and the moral imagination required to care for one another. In an age when many seek to sidestep obligation, Shannon’s clarity and generosity of spirit feel both refreshing and necessary. Her work invites us to consider our response to responsibility and to rise toward our most empathetic selves.
Read “Her Brother’s Keeper…Or, Morality as Posited by Philosopher T.M. Scanlon’s Seminal 1998 Essay ‘What We Owe to Each Other’” in Synkroniciti’s Expectations, Vol. 8, No. 2, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Shannon Frost Greenstein (She/They) resides near Philadelphia with her family and cats. She is the author of Through the Lens of Time (2026), a forthcoming fiction collection with Thirty West Publishing, and These Are a Few of My Least Favorite Things (2022), a book of poetry from Really Serious Lit. Shannon is a former Ph.D. candidate in Continental Philosophy and a multi-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Her passions include Friedrich Nietzsche, anti-racism, the Seven Summits, the Hamilton Soundtrack, motherhood, and acquiring more cats.