childhood memories feel like rust crumbling in my fingers and leaving their orange stains as i skip over the horrific teenaged years that my little sister remembers as her childhood.
i resent her for having a bad childhood. i say that our childhood was good, was great with two loving parents in a big house in the country with long grass and animals to hold. but her childhood was a falling down home with seeping walls and crying mothers and a screaming father stuck in a house that imprisoned all of us in seclusion and an older redheaded sister who maintained control in her life run by parents who no longer saw reason or justice by treating her little redheaded sister like trash.
i forget that her childhood was not mine i forget that the things she remembers were awful that daddy did scream and shove that mommy did cry and quake and throw and push and smash and shove and scream and rip in the middle of the night while she slept and i wandered the lonely caverns of my book-filled room where i hid with my fantastical friends who shielded me from the screams in the middle of the night that your deaf ears missed
i am sorry for undermining the truth of your childhood i forget that we are different i forget what changed i forget the hidden, resentful monster that overtook our parents and bled down into their children but you, you remember it was the only thing you knew