Katherine

 I look in the mirror’s reflection, at times, and though it’s only my own face I see, I wonder if I’m seeing yours as well. Eyes that have seen too much and not enough, are they also your eyes? Mouth that turns so quickly from a frown to a smile, is it yours? Sometimes, I reach out, and if it weren’t for the glass that stands between us, then I know I would touch you, fingertips identical.

 Once, we were two, making up one. What choice, then, was it? Did fate gamble and it could just as easily have been me now residing in heaven? Or were you just not strong enough to have faced this cruel, cold world? Why, why was it you, and not me? I had no special power, and I certainly wasn’t stronger, for the world’s cold did cut through to my bones.

 You would have been beautiful, the soft gentle side that I so obviously lack. Loud spoken, but not in a grating way; no, the way that draws people in. Is it so strange that I can sit here by the window as the cold rain drips down, and see that other universe where you are here, below, and not above? But you are not here and I, I am one! Against every fiber that weaves me together, I am one, not two.

 In every clear lake, mirror and windowpane, you look back at me, watching from the other side. You gave to me your burden, the burden of the first born, and at times, I know I’ve failed. Yet I am here, and so I will complete the task meant for two. And one day, there won’t be any glass between us, and when you reach out your hand to me, we will touch once more. I can almost hear it now, in fields of green with the eternal sun watching over me; “Sister, come play with me! Come see!”