disfigured
A poem about the recent loss of my identical twin sister. I love and miss you, sis...
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there were two of me
once
not in the way people mean
when they talk about reflection
or similarity
or matching outfits in photographs
i mean two heartbeats
that learned each other
before language
before memory
before the world could name us separate
you were not beside me
you were with me
woven through one another
a second nervous system
a quiet, constant knowing
i never had to reach for
blue eyes
identical to mine
but still entirely yours
and now
reality keeps insisting
i am singular
as if that is not an amputation
as if i have not been bisected
without anesthesia
in a way that leaves no clean edge
no visible place to point and say
“this is where she was.”
i walk around
with an invisible wound
something missing
mutilated
i was torn apart
and whatever held me together
went with you
people look at me
and see a whole body
but i feel
disfigured
expected to live
without a vital organ
who am i
without the person
who made me make sense
who am i
without the witness
who knew me before i became
someone existent
they tell me
you are still here
in my laugh
in my hands
in the small, indescribable things
but that feels like
being asked to accept fragments
as a whole
i don’t want traces
i want what was ripped from me
as something outside of me
someone i could turn toward
someone who could look back
and lay your head on my shoulder
not this silence
stitched over
where you used to be
nerve endings exposed
left this way
there is no buffer
to help make sense of the world
turned inside out
like all the parts meant to be protected
are suddenly visible
and still
somewhere beneath the damage
beneath the wrongness of being only one
there is a thread
that did not break
i feel it
in the quiet moments
once filled with your voice
not gone
just unreachable
like a room in a house
i no longer have the key to
there were two of me
once
and even now
in ways i cannot prove
or properly survive
there still are.
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