One day, I looked in the mirror
Recognized your dimples, your birthmark, your eyes
And told you, your baby sister will be fourteen tommorrow.
And that’s when I knew you weren’t coming back.
You hadn’t seen eight, nine, or any number since. But fourteen was when
it began to sink in. How could I possibly feel close to you?
When our mother made us with different men,
in different centuries, near different friends
For you our mother was young and naive,
For me, after seven, one who promised
Over and over
She would never leave
again.
No one understood, which sounds unfair, but how could they?
I grieved a brother who was only alive for seven of my birthdays
I listened to the music you liked,
Record names like Relapse, Recovery, and Revival,
Mom hated when you did it, so I just didn’t tell her.
I got bigger, faster, stronger, a picture of success
As if you yourself had painted it
And for a while, these connections to your living self stopped the flow
Of anger and hatred and love uncontrolled
But over the years, it wasn’t enough
You were still gone, and I was still me
That’s when I met the thing that owned your love, your life,
More than our mother, more than me, more than your wife, more than family
The first time was fine, the second I knew
That I was no better man than you
Maybe our mother was right to worry that lightning can strike twice.
Either way, she’s the link between our genotypes.
Here I am, blaming her for my mistakes again.
Another thing we’d laugh about if you didn’t have an end.
Maybe I could have an accident too.
Maybe every high brings me closer to you
Until we get to the same place,
as close as we can get
Or maybe you’re somewhere out there,
saving me from future regrets.
Either way, the world spins, my world spins
Without you, until heaven,
If heaven is a place, or state of being,
Or consciousness, or possibility
Or if you somehow know me through an earth-pointed lens.
But of course you know me–I’m you,
though I’ve fought since seven not to be.
The only way to keep you alive is through me.
Or that’s the way it used to feel, anyway.
Now it’s become a habit, so I can label it
as “traumatic experience” and “anxious attachment”
When it’s been you and I fighting, in a way siblings should never have to,
the whole time.
-N. Trepiak
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