SISTER

Of you, by you, for you. Thank God, I am obliging. How should I know what incompleteness feels like? When will you answer me? How should I express this to you? Through another handsome letter? By fighting against myself? My soul? Your soul? I couldn’t care less about telling them apart. What I care about is you so long ago, the light coming through your open window and the freckles on the back of your thigh; the sense that life was ending soon and we would meet our fate.

Away from you, I have tried to find that kind of thing anywhere else. Everlasting doom. But it was only there that one time between us. Even so, at least I will have had that one time, unquestioningly.

If only I was a master orator like you and I could explain everything perfectly, but I have no entourage to fashion my language pretty, and I am almost certainly talentless. If I came after you, I would be on the road alone for a long time: losing, straining, preaching. If I am lucky, preaching. So I should not go, I know. Chasing my own tail looks so much worse around here, though. On every winning streak I am suddenly invincible. At least over there a gust of wind would come and carry me someplace amazing, far away from you to my very own place near some body of fresh water near some man and child. I could burn incense there. There, I could prod around in a wonderful long dress and soak up the ocean with my hair alone and dance and dance and dance.

Wow, I have some heart of gold. I am like the Book of Longing doing what I am told. When you know what you are, how do you protect it? How do you prevent it? When will you answer me? You are the only one who might know.

Now, how should I know what incompleteness feels like? The incompleteness I spoke to you of three winters ago and which you nodded about when tea bags were blowing against our faces in plumes of smoke. “Is it on me? Is it on me?” Whatever, I said, because I knew we were going to be fine all along.

Perhaps it feels like this. Call me, shove me, hold me and hold my mouth wide open to look inside so you can see I am hiding nothing. There is nothing to say I have not already told you a thousand times. What am I hiding? Nothing. That is incompleteness: completeness itself: constant openness without insecurity. A rare thing these days. No mysteries hidden inside and no great trickery, no nameless deception you have not long ago uncovered and made me aware of. I wept that day. I was a child again that day you grew up. How many days ago was it now? How many hours have I spent staring at myself staring at myself, imagining another planet I could disappear to? I should stay hidden, I should stay far away.

Last year I saw you beneath your hungry life, drunken and loveless, moaning beneath hot sheets where I am now, and how lovely you were like that, when you were so far away from the future and so near to something we thought was impossible. We were never going to get that far, we were only pretending. For that I wanted to shatter you even more, because you could not understand. Not even you, who understood everything. But I blamed the wrong thing. I thought of you as my rainy day fund. I dreamed of one day smashing you open with a hammer to see how much had I saved inside you? I shall never know the true answer. Now here we are: Masters of Tenderness, Masters of Pretending.

I am reading too many books on WWII and I am starting to dream of bloodshed, massacres, deep inexplicable loneliness. Come home soon and tell me how sorry you are. I miss telling you that you have nothing to be sorry for. I miss loving you and telling you I love you and watching you try to tame yourself before saying Yes, Yes, Yes. I Love You More. I miss the short leash you had yourself on, that I was always trying to take off even if you did not realise. I miss your squealing, tackling responses, how affectionate and lovely and fleeting they always seemed, and so curious. And what I gave to you in return was what you gave me. Absoluteness. Completeness. My heart might explode. But I am too afraid of pain, I cannot give in.

That photograph of us at thirteen and fourteen makes death feel otherworldly. When I look at it, I have the sense that we are going to live forever and be beautiful and young and listening to the same music. It is a dumb thing to say, it is almost evil, but how lucky we were to grow up together, and I am sad it is done now. How lucky we were to cheat and lie and sleep and cry and rejoice together when we did.

I am even lucky that your greatness is a double-edged sword. All that you are makes everything and everyone else inferior, inconsequential, trivial, untoward. I have terrible thoughts about others and the future because of you. They are each like stones around a waterfall. I watch you pour and pour, wanting to give back, wanting to return the favour. What favour? I shall never find what I’m looking for, because I have already found it.

And yet you have made me infinitely hopeful. Does everyone think they are so lucky? Like us, does everyone love and love and love and become twisted up by their love? Does everyone think they have such volume with another person? That they can create light and movement and colour? If they do, I should find them. And then one of them I should marry, I should escape to, I should transform into again. And you should too. But what if we never do? You are in front of me now, my past and future. How complicated, how easy. Before I met you I knew everything. Now I find out I know nothing, every day I wake and have nothing left to hide and the world instead is the mysterious thing, and I am so much more distressed, and so much more enthralled.