It is said that your sisters are as close to you as your very own hands and feet. Like your limbs, your sister never truly leaves you—even in death, your blood subsists frozen in her vessels. Even in death, in eternal stillness and a heart sheathed in resilient paragon, your limbs are never quite somebody else’s.
Your sister is crying. Outside the windowsill and hidden in glass is the sky, thick and starless—it bleeds an awful black, almost as though someone had extinguished the lights with the persuasion of an off switch. Burnt into your skin are creases you see in the rain—her tears have made a home in your veins, a lethal structure ablaze with the dying ember of a burnt out fire. Your sister. Your very kith and kin. Your fingers itch to pull her into an embrace, but there is a voice in your mind—isn’t there always? Always a voice. Always a reason to leave. Always a hesitant but.
When her home crumbles, you will be free, and then you will walk away. Your limbs will tremble with the candor of it, but you mustn’t look back. You cannot look back. You were once overlooked, by the wild ones and their children, their daughters and their mothers—don’t you remember? Don’t you?
Mothers die fragile and daughters leave home seditious—but sisters, sisters are without an end.
You were once a shadow lost in the woodland, and the wind in the trees was singing, chanting, do you believe? Do you believe? Do you believe?
Well? Do you?
*
She grows weaker by the hour, and you cannot breathe. You can hear her windows shatter in your bloodstream, feel the shards of glass pierce the skin of your forearm; her doors creak open and splinter, her closets whisper and rasp. Your mother snakes a heartening arm around your waist and tells you to believe, believe she’ll be okay and she’ll be okay, but you lost that magic in a snowstorm eleven years ago, the morning she was born, blue and fighting for air. That was how she came, fighting, and that is the way she must go. Fighting.
Fight, you scream, and the first room collapses. The wreckage tickles your heart. FIGHT. YOU ARE NOT ME. YOU NEED TO FIGHT, GODDAMNIT, YOU NEED TO FIGHT. FIGHT. FIGHT. It is when your voice starts to sound less like yours and more like hers that you fall to the ground and put your head in your arms.
The childhood that was yours just as much as it was hers flashes before your eyes like a bolt of lightning. Before you know it, it’s dinnertime and you are sitting with your family of four; your sister laughing as your father makes fun of your mother ("In no time you’ll be so forgetful your daughter will be able to sneak into your room, take money from your purse and convince you it was a dream straight after"). You force a chuckle and pick at your food. Your sister’s laughter is brought to a standstill almost immediately. She shoots you a solemn, tentative glance and you shrug. Language is a vague, empty thing—it’s almost ironic that both of you grew up to be shy lovers of the written word, you a pained writer and she an avid reader. A supporter. A follower.
See, you were good at writing poetry, but she was good at being happy. Now, now you are not so sure. Her eyes say more than any sonnet you have ever written—not say, they scream, all sorts of things—from I’ll sing you home to I’ve spent my entire life fighting to I cry underwater so you don’t hear the sound to can you hear me? Can you hear me? I love you. I love you. I love you so much and I never told you. Never told you how much.
*
There is always a voice. Always a reason to leave. Always the hesitant but.
But there is always a sister.
Always a friend to the spirit. Always a person who knows you are smiling, even in the dark. Always the person who loves you and cares for you and will do anything for you. Always the person who despite all of this knows exactly where to drive the knife to hurt you the most.
Tonight, your sister stabs you in the lungs. The left first, and then the right. Mother, leave her be. I was crying and she walked right past me. She can’t breathe and now you expect me to help her? I’ll destroy her. She destroyed me.
(You did. You knew and still, still still still, you walked away, right into the arms of the wild ones. And their children. And their mothers and their daughters. You were once overlooked, but so was your very kith and kin. You forgot that).
(Well, you forgot one time too many).
Always a sister, she whispers as she drops a fiery match into the red.
*
You burst into flames, scream in the dark. She hears you. Of course she does. She is your sister.
PLEASE, you scream, and the whole home disintegrates. The rubble punctures your heart. THIS ISN’T YOU. THIS ISN’T YOU. FIGHT HARDER, GODDAMNIT. FIGHT. HARDER.
Your voice subsides to a whisper—you keep forgetting to breathe.
Harder. Fight…harder.
You hear a breathy cry in the distance, and you are not sure whether it is hers or yours. Is there a difference anymore?
Fight…
She is your sister, and you are hers. You have the same colour eyes. Chocolate brown. Your mother always claimed hers were prettier, livelier, a lighter shade of brown—golden, maybe.
When she looks into the fire, the orange glow doesn’t reach them. They are already the same.
She is not yours. Not anymore.
