My sister helps me draft text messages and jumps on the sofa with me
We scream before church because I’m in my first official relationship
and he’s special.
We remember those Wednesday nights when we used to have tea in our great grandmother’s china
and curl our hair the old-fashioned way and scrap book and make meringues and cinnamon tortillas
and we’ll never forget how to make meringues or those Wednesday evenings with tea.
We bolster each other and adjust to 6am mornings and late nights and chores not being done quite right
and we laugh when our new puppy eats my homework at 9pm
and then cry
but my twin handwrites it so I can hand it in the next day.
My twin starts to become colourful again and asks about art university and goes to open days and
comes home with new sketch books to fill and helps me dye my hair again.
I wear her clothes to school and people ask where I got them, and it makes me so proud to be able
to tell them it was her who made them.
My little sisters do drama and needlework and ask me to look at their new clothes and listen to their monologues
and it’s their way of saying they miss me and want to spend time with me.
The cats grow up and hate everyone and we imagine up nicknames for them and trap them in our arms for cuddles
when we can catch them.
I try to balance boyfriend and best friend and suddenly it is Christmas again and we are dancing to
Christmas songs at 11pm and posting videos of it online.
It’s new year and I am crying in school, which
I am never late for but today I am,
because life is too much to handle and I don’t know how to deal with it.
My twin is helping at an event and I just want to curl up in a ball and cry and watch something with her but I wait
and wait
and wait
until she gets home and I can tell her what happened and she can
defend me because I am not strong enough to defend myself.
And I don’t know what I would do without her.