Dusk

To hear it told, and I have, endlessly, I was born the serious, unsmiling, difficult child. I'll never match my brother's lightness, and every moment I spend next to him makes my feet heavier, roots unfurling into the ground. Even when left to myself, I ended up like a moth, drawn to your sunny smile, your carefree embrace of pleasure and life, the way you made me laugh. Reveling in the moments you made me feel weightless. But at some point something shifts, the drink that feels pressured, packing a bowl as soon as we get home, or before we can go out: the moments of passionate ambition that crumble to dust in the light of day, the moments of vulnerability that give a glimpse of the depth and rawness of your wounds, still, and the feeling of air on them makes you jerk away, shield them farther from me. I stand here, all my flaws in full view, painfully open for you, and it's too threatening to your cloak of sunshine to really see me. You flaunt your light as if to prove it to yourself, casting me into shadow by default. You ask me if I mind you having another drink, that if it bothers me you'll stop for the night, and I hate having to ask you, knowing that if left to your own devices, you'd keep going until you'd driven away all of the depth and intelligence that keeps me in love with you. And so go ahead babe, and I drove us home, and I laid next to you as you laughed, vodka soaked whispering in my ear, and I was alone.

So now I'm back home, without you, and my brother blows through the house, a whirlwind of blond hair and snatches of unexpected accents, picking up and shrugging off personalities like so many baubles, and my smiles tug at my inadequacy. But he hides no cavernous hollows, he's never had to darken me to lighten himself, and I'd love him with or without ambition, intensity, depth. We're yin and yang, but he never asks my permission, so I don't have to give it, and there's no pretense that we're balanced, and I don't know if it's better or worse, but at least here I know when I'm alone.