My Other Half

‘Be all you can be,’ she said, as she brushed my long strands of auburn with her too delicate fingers. Her hands took their time to appreciate every single natural curl of my flowing hair, admiring the reflection of herself when she looked at me. I never knew she was — at that moment once more — imagining the girl that should have been sitting by my side, sharing my eyes, my tears.

Trembling fingers then touched my cheek and turned my face towards her. She made me meet her eyes. Two dark pools of experience surrounded by lines of wisdom and woe. ‘Never give up on your dreams.’ She made me promise. And I did. As I gazed lovingly down upon her and crossed my fingers behind my back, I did.

Little did she know what I dreamt of. Little did she know of the ravenous anger that haunted me at night, now more than ever ready to tear me down, transform me into a grief-struck monster, a hideous creature torn apart by envy and misunderstanding. I never knew, when I first saw those motherly eyes beaming down on my newly born form, that they saw two where there was only one. All I knew was that I was never good enough.

A desire to seek revenge on whatever it was that had taken her from me engulfed me. A focused hatred of the fast-multiplying cells of vileness, body-form evilness, undiagnosed for too long. But that was only half of the story. It was, however, the only half I knew. Even as the disease slowly spread and took her from me visibly, I had lost her gradually over the years. The fissure that had burst into being after I was born, a hairline fracture that grew as I did, had slowly torn her apart. The memory she never shared with me had weighed upon her so.

My Other Half

Little did I know of the roads she had travelled, the woes that had etched those deep lines in her face, all the way into her soul. Little did I know of the heart that had stopped after being broken in too many pieces by a love long lost. Had I known, I would have raged differently. But she never breathed a word of my sister to me.

Instead, her final breaths bestowed upon me a witch’s wish:
‘You shall be as beautiful on the outside as you are within…’
Spoken as a gift.
Received as a curse.