muszka
I spend too much time writing about my sister. Every word though, gets
lost. Sucked back into the cavern that I am trying to write about.
That is the problem about writing an absence. The nothingness consumes the
words.
My sister and I are not close.
There is one of my secrets, touch it gently.
So many siblings, so close. So much loyalty, and shared secrets. And I
move amongst them like a liar, a betrayer of the blood.
There is so little shared between us that in its minimalism it becomes
domineering. Overwhelming.
Please understand we are not antagonistic. We are perfectly, blandly,
devastatingly congenial. We can sit and watch Friends, and laugh together.
We can go grocery shopping together in our sweatpants and feel the same
embarrassment when we run into that guy that lives down the street.
Once, last summer, I was out with my friends and she was there too‹in the
same bar as me. The same dusky basement. I didn't know that though. I
found out because someone else mentioned she was there. When I asked her
about it she said she'd seen me. There it was. Bald.
You saw me, I said, but you didn't come to say hello.
Well, she said, no.
I see.
Now do you see?
We are bound by blood. There is an inherent loyalty. But there is no reason,
no relationship, no other support for the loyalty. It just floats there,
disembodied.
We don't trust each other.
I have put you outside of my life. And you have disappeared into yours.
This is our mystery.
My mystery. I try to solve it, with my clumsy words. But I am no scientist,
that is you. And you are foreign to me.
I do love you, my sister. I love you as my sister, I love in that whole
sense. Like a blanket, I wrap around you. I cannot love you in the
details, the micro‹but I will love you in the macro.
My love somehow betrays you.
I feel that keenly.
But the point is, it is love, after all.
