I've been with you.
You stared at me from across the room with a smile that spoke of the silence that we were not breaking.
A silence we didn't mean to fill as four years had torn us apart and I can not believe that I can see you.
10 feet away in a lawn chair in our sister's living room and that's you.
Six feet, curly long hair, gentleness.
I ask you "what?" because i'm awaiting an explanation and a next movement, one more thing to rip me to pieces and throw me down the gutter and you answer "nothing" with a smirk and a feeling of content.
That's when I realized I didn't want to leave,
I could stay in that moment forever instead of  holding onto that memory indefinitelty.
I'm not good at saying goodbye or hello because i'm scared of what happens before, after, and inbetween.
I'm a coward, carrying a white flag surrendering to the sound of my heartbreak.
I didn't write about you because I didn't know how,
After hundreds of poems, thousands of feelings, so many many tears being dropped in your wake, I didn't know what to say
And I didn't want to leave you.

She’s mean
She’s annoying
She’s god awful

But she’s my sister
So I’ll only complain

When it seems all the world wants to sell me on painkillers, you face the troubled of all sorts with a scalpel and a wink. Even when those stitches holding your own spitshined heart together are looking a little iffy.

Since childhood, we’ve floundered like fish out of water both longing for the sea, but with age, I think that you and I have come to view the ocean in very different ways.

What I see as an adventure, you’ve always seen as home.

The sea could never quite mystify someone who’s strived to be more siren than human. No, unlike the flower from which you were named, your real garden patch is present with the planets.

You make me want to be as stalwart as Stonewall, and save my wishing well quarters for the pigs who tried to suss out every non-straight playing broad through her suit clothes, so that on the days where the face of my best friend's assaulter bears down like the man in the moon, she’ll preserve her beautiful, blessed hands by halting her fist before it can hit any wall.

Apparently, you’ve been learning Russian on a whim since age eleven. You love tattoos and art in it's sometimes most tantric forms. The firm and sometimes too-firm handshake between aesthetic and soul, and what, дорогая сестра, is more human than that?

And you called yourself cynical.
Yet when the life of a honeybee means so much in your hands, I can’t understand how you tried to scorn the weight of the world. You found beauty in banana slugs, and I have to believe you do not know your own self.

Seeing you make sense of other people, I now believe that mermaids are incredibly self-conscious, so when we asail our Somali plundered doubloons, blood diamonds, pearls of tortured oysters, and other ill-gotten goods back into the sea, may we feel we’ve done our duty when they see their own reflections for the first time and become narcissists.

Because of you, I tried for the first time to love myself, because like it or not, this is what I’ve got. What we’ve got. The most detached tag team duo the world’s never seen.

But on the day that I finally throw the dragon’s den fortune of our mother back into the mariana trench from which she and the sessions family came, I’ll think back to the time where she said that, as siblings, we’d grow up to be best friends. But let’s face it, we have both lost a lot of best friends, though you are the only one of all those come and gone who’s yet to steer me wrong. Okay, that’s a fat lie, because for a second of my life you convinced me to believe that you are cynical.

Comparing your stride to the rest of the world’s, I will never again judge somebody for the way they walk. Even if they have to drag themselves, kicking and screaming from point A to point B, the last thing a person needs is another stranger stepping on their lifeline.

I hear of everything you're doing, day in and day out, think of all the times this world’s nearly lost you, and I remember the statue in our neighbor’s front lawn. A little girl-an angel- with butterflies landing atop her precious hands. Then I realized that to be an angel statue means you can never reach out for more, and suddenly, I know why you always preferred cyborgs.

Dear night mother,
The youngling flew the coop.
Off for wild adventures, he cannot be tamed.
His elder kin spoke of magic,
The intellectual splendor of spells
Gifted yes, but not quite so as her
The painted daughter of darkness,
She colours the world in twilight.
This brings us to dusk, mantle I wear proud.
Eldest of eld, nutured by you mother,
To grow strong, wicked and well.

Those glowing eyes,
The prestege of feathers
Mother owl, bless our endeavours.
Grow old, grow wise

Bless you, oh mother,
And the nocturne skies.

To be or not to be
Within the same room
But mind wandering

You're here, you say
But never around
Always planning the next escape

I'd rather you go
Be elsewhere, not here
It breaks all our hearts
When you can't seem to care

you called me up.
it'd been a while
because i'd felt bad.
you needed help moving
out of that 'memory-infested
******' ****-hole' as you called it.
a rental truck stood in wait outside your house,
as did i.
we didn't wait long.
your face was the same, your body different.
your body screamed late night binge,
watching home videos
and crying into your takeout.
having a wife
and then suddenly not having a wife
will do that to ya.
you wiped a bit of sweat from your forehead
before it could gain traction
and trail down your face
like a salty
man-tear.
when we were done you looked exhausted,
and it was growing late,
but i was scared to leave.
"do you want a beer?" you said
so i think you were scared too.
we sat down on the couch, staring at the wall
almost pretending there was a tv mounted on it.
i resisted the urge
to tell you i was sorry,
*** who cares,
really, and
what if it killed the mood?
looking back
the mood was ****** anyway,
and i should've just hugged you.

Few things in life
Bring pleasure
And happiness
Like a friend.

To play games
To share snacks,
To hug,
To love.

To be woken up in the morning
By your notification
That begs and begs
"Get up and play!"

To snuggle with
When it's cold
To stay warm
When snow falls

To hear the
Pitter-patter
Of their feet
Just out the door.

To go outside
Together, forever
Like siblings
Like roommates.

A man's best friend
And a woman's too
Is a happy, loving,
Playful
Dog.

Eldest,
You are cruel by nature
and not knowing better,
but you will come to learn that is no excuse.
An unfilled form,
you're a hand
half in a glove,
and it makes you careless.
You will later apologize for coming first,
Eldest.

Eldest,
you are a stand in.
See what responsibility looks like stretched over adult bones.
Stretch out yourself.
Pull on it.
You idealize a lighthouse.
You chart a course,
some careless and rambling march,
that well,
isn't really supposed to look like that.
Slowly,
you grow to resent your stretch marks,
Eldest.

Eldest,
always guilty,
you wish you’d known that you’d been responsible all along.
Eldest,
dwell on this, as to make sure it won’t happen again.
Teach your eldest child this lesson and hope
they do better than you.
Blindly feel the yoke’s pull,
Eldest.