The Siblings

"How many siblings do you have?"

This has always been a difficult question

Even before the mixed up family connections happened

I knew it was supposed to be easy

I lived with my mom, who lived with her sisters

I shared a room with my cousins, and also my sibling

My cousins lived with us, and we stayed in their rooms

Family is family, there was no difference

There was so much movement, ins-and-outs

There was no difference between cousin or sibling

They were all my equals

There was no difference between parents, aunts, or grandparents

They were all my elders

The oldest to me was the middle in reality

But I never spent much time with the older two

I was the youngest most of the time

I don't remember too many memories of our adults

There was a time before I noticed the absence

We would walk to the bus stop every day together

There was the three of us on a ten minute walk

The morning was easier to stay on track

Since, if we missed the bus, we had to walk an hour to school

We would walk back from the bus stop every day together

The afternoon was easier to distract

We would sneak into our neighbour's lawn

To steal flowers for the oldest to press in her books

We would detour to check for the haunted house on the corner

Stories say there was the ghost of a girl in the attic

We would go to the corner store for candy and pop

Then swing and climb as we cut through the park

Every morning, when I shared a room with the oldest

The same song started my day at 05:00

A song of self-confidence, a song that would be blared on her stereo

It was annoying at first, but if I was able to wake myself up

Pull myself off my mattress on the floor of the closet

She would show me how she did her hair and put on eyeliner

In the summer we would be out of the house every day

We would go to the creek or the pond

Playing fairies and make-believe

We would take our bikes and explore the city

With our plan written on a notepad in the kitchen

If the weather was against our plans

We would rush to the library, reading every book and sharing the online world

We would hop fences and dance in the thundershowers

Hold funerals for our broken toys and dead animals we found

Ghost journals and mystery hunting

Practiced performances and elaborate stories with our dolls

Perfected PB&J sandwiches and stolen snacks

I'm sure that sometimes it looked like we would kill each other

The way we would fight and the viciousness that would be on our face,

The real viciousness came from protection

Protection of ourselves, protection of our family