My Sister As Myself

Kaela Ryan

she and i are both getting ready in the small blue bathroom, the radiator clacking, showing us it is alive and well today. she reaches for her lotion out of the cabinet and i swipe my hand in front of hers to grab my own bottle of moisturizer before she slams the wooden door shut again. i stand next to her in front of the mirror, only one of us visible in my gaze. while i smear lotion on my own face, i watch her do the same. she is so beautiful. people always say to us that we look the same, but i can’t see it. her eyebrows are full and her cheeks are rosy and her smile makes me laugh. she raises a hand to fix her hair and i do the same, but i can still only see her head, not my own.

any likeness witnessed between us is a surprise to me, but a welcome one, for she is like the sun on a cloudy day or the breeze you feel on your skin, chilling the beads of sweat on your back while you lie on your stomach at the beach. she is a strawberry, a cloud in the shape of a star. pink sugar and fairy wings and ivy crawling up the princess’s tower. and i am the witch, the mother, the full rain cloud, the moss on the forest floor. i am older and she is younger and yet she is everything i look up to and hope to be when i grow up.

so when i stand back behind her while she puts her contacts in, i am startled to see only her face in the mirror, and i come to think of her as myself. as my reflection, as my mirror image, as my inverse, as my sister, as an extension of my soul.

It Started Long Before Us

Reagan Riffle