Duality: Creative Writing Assignment
What follows is a fictional truth.
I don’t remember being born. The things we didn’t do. The places we didn’t visit or the arguments we never had. I don’t remember our parents folding up the extra crib or donating all the extra clothes. All the unwanted attention I was given as the one who survived. They called me a twinless and you a still. That I was a lesser person because of what happened to you. A half of a whole since the violence of birth. A familial itch on a phantom limb which could never be scratched. Two asynchronous heartbeats which became an unwilling one. They ripped us apart but buried you and planted me. You’d be the nutrients for both of us when the time came.
At night I can hear you. I hear you breathing as you fall asleep next to me. Your closing thoughts on the events of the day. I hear what you wish you hadn’t said and how you thought long about it afterwards. I hear you standing up to him. I hear you say the words and be healed. You want to take it back but instead you gift it to me. I hear the regret in your voice as you talk about her. But you never talk to me like I talk to you. I ache for response but it’s never there. Presence without being present. All I want is the gift of you talking back. They called you still but I know you’re not. I know you have a name. I hear about where you’ve been since last night. Deep into the African jungle searching for a temple’s lost treasure. High into the mountains with the man in the white suit. Backwards and forwards to misophonic places we’d been before and would return in time. To the spot where we cried together and held hands as we jumped into the freezing darkness.
I feel your touch on the back of my neck. You’re always there and not there. Hidden in plain sight. I take your hand and hold it tight, shepherding me through the list of someone else’s priority. I’m no longer a less when you’re here. I’m an us. A singular plural. Completed. You hold me as my anxiety grips me beyond what medication is willing to suppress. You straighten out the ball curled tight. You tell me all things will pass and I believe you. I never have to knock on the door to be let in, you’re always home. You touch my face in ways I always wanted her to. The ways she wanted to touch you but never could. You perform the touching for all of us as she still lays an extra place at dinner. The muscle memory of grief. I don’t have to wish you were here. She still does.
I tell her I can smell you. She asks me if I want to increase the dose. I smell you in the freshly mown grass of a house we called home, now occupied by that nice couple from Connecticut everyone knows is trying for a family. I smell the absence of love. I smell you on the pillow in the morning. The half-scent of an echo which never ends as I scream into a deeply indifferent abyss. I smell what it was like to hide under the stairs with you while they argued and he left. I smell you in the things we never ate together and the places we never went. I smell you in being sent to our room. The first time we ever stole candy from the old man down the block or when they cut short our vacation in a rage. The smell of being hit and blamed. I tell her and she doesn’t believe me. She thinks I’m imagining things. She only wants to bridge the gap between us, but I tell her there has never been one. I ask her to leave. I ask her to leave us. I ask her to leave us alone.
I know you’re there when I taste the meals we never ate. You bring back exotic spices from your travels and we enjoy them together. We eat but I am never full. Always half-empty. The hunger of an overwhelming us as I echo her setting an extra place in my apartment for one. I wash my hands and you tell me I missed a spot. Incomplete. Uncleaned. You always leave room for more as I cook too much for both of us but know I am a leftover. I taste bitter. A remnant which made it through the meal unconsumed. Tomorrow’s broth. Recycled but never renewed. Soon I will become garbage and begin a new adventure. You leave me behind.
One day you’re gone. You’ve decided fifty years is enough and know this lesser has to find their germinated way alone. You’re all this lesser has ever known, but in the silence the half hasn’t been buried, it’s been planted. I don’t listen to your adventures any more. I write them down and others read them. I don’t smell the undernourished memory of you, but it helps me stay close. I don’t feel your touch but I do feel a guiding hand when I need it. A life lived as partial finally afforded the opportunity of completion. I know we have a name.
