There were always six of you in every class.
When the teacher would call roll, lilting over your last name,
you would grin and press your arm toward the sky
like you were the only one,
like you were named after an element
or a constellation no one had heard of before.

We were partners in Home Ec.
and you monogramed the top of our cake
in purple icing. Beneath the sweeping curve
of our shared letter there was a chunk missing.
Your hand had skipped a pace, the muscle forgetting,
and a glass cup toppled onto our finished project.

You caught my face going grim
and threatened to frost my brain yellow through my ears
until I was knocking over kitchenware alongside you.
Then you said if we can’t laugh at what will **** us
then we have no place laughing at all.
I just looked away and continued wiping flour off of the counter.

I’m sorry I’ve not been myself.
Has it made you sad, sleepwalker?
Do you wish I could come back
and force you to sit and listen,
run a hand down your back just once,
push in,
and make you release
the moths from your stomach?

I remember how you introduced me to your family, pulling me at the wrist, nudging me to shake hands.
Later I shook hands with a doctor and acted like an adult when everyone began using words that were confusing for me but hurt all the same.

You wore plastic jewelry and grinned when I grew bold enough to wear my favorite turquoise pants to school.
You called them, “suitably academic” and shoved me with your shoulder.
Later in the after, I bought red slacks and yellow jeans and wore them angrily to class as if that would make you say my name again.

Two years with a school counselor and I would still mumble northwestern states like I’d never even paid enough attention to specifics.
Like I didn’t know the shape of the town or the photo of the front of the building.

I would pretend until I couldn’t remember either.
Were you in Oregon or Idaho? Could I not call because of long distance fees (lie) or because I was too lazy (lie)?
I learned that denial is a degenerative form of coping and years later I bought a pair of purple pants and felt guilty that they made me happy.

I was angry that even if the earth hadn’t swallowed you up by then, you wouldn’t understand the significance of things like bright colors and pants and dumb homemade beads anymore.

You are ingrained in me.
If someone tried to pry us apart
it would be like pulling at a plant,
tugging hard until the base of the roots
pops out and still the earth won’t release her hold.
The vines keep coming in knots
until you’re forced to dig them up too
because they refuse to be separated.

We are tangled. Not two
halves of a whole or pieces of a part,
but sibling roots twisted like lovers’ limbs,
wholly separate but very much
twined together to be something else entirely.

I’m not saying I wouldn’t go on and move forward,
but if you were gone from me
I would be less.
The days would dim
and the moon wouldn’t be something
I held my breath for anymore.
I would be less.

I am afraid. I know I’m supposed to pretend I’m not
but I’m terrified.
I want to rush out in desperation, reeking and determined;
shove you behind me while I tear the world apart
until some poor schmuck in a wrinkled lab coat who
doesn’t understand the gravity of this
clutches at my sleeve,
to tell me they’ve found it and it’s all going to be okay.

I make myself forget.
Then sometimes I hear a phrase or see a word
and I remember,

and I’m angry. I am filled with it. I want to destroy someone good,
rip children from mothers, sabotage, and crumble
and claw up the things in this world
that are right,
because this is not right and
I have no remorse that my rage could fill someone else’s
life with dread and pain.
(that should scare me, but it doesn’t)
I am bloodthirsty and selfish and you deserve better
than a lottery that says your light could get smothered
under a thickness of receding grey matter and nuclear inclusion.

There is an imagining of me and you building a life.
I am much stronger, you are more patient, and together
we dig deep to bury trees in a yard crafted
on morning coffee and late night wine.
You get angry because I forget to pick up after myself,
and I get irritated because I’m pretty sure you resent
how much I love the cat.
There is a wobbly chair on the front porch,
our first and last attempt at carpentry,
and there are weeds sprouting up between
cracks in the back patio.
I swear your shoulder is the best place to rest my head,
and you keep kneading at my stomach
like a kitten or infant, as we lay
on a hammock in the backyard.
I love you from the place past my lungs,
between each side of my ribcage,
and further in than anyone has been.
I can feel it swelling and radiating,
can you?
Can you feel how heavy my love is?

I guess that’s how things change:
like seasons but not nearly as methodic,
and like lovers or skin that finds
new indentations and marks over time.
Like how one day I look up over
my mug of coffee and you’re
no longer there across from me.
Instead, you’re a thousand miles
east or west and I can no longer
keep up with the colored marks on a map.