dear you,
you were older than me by three minutes.
i know three minutes is nothing.
a breath.
a blink.
a song before the next one starts.
but sometimes i think about those three minutes too much.
because you existed in this world before me.
for three whole minutes, there was a version of the universe where you were here and i was not.
and then i arrived.
and for me, there was never a world without you.
maybe that is the strangest thing about being your twin.
you had a before.
i never did.
people call us two halves of the same thing, but they never talk about the fact that one half got here first.
they never talk about what it feels like to spend your whole life loving someone who has always felt like they were part of the landscape.
like the sky.
like gravity.
like something you do not notice because it has always been there.
and maybe that is why i am so afraid of losing you.
because losing you would not feel like losing someone.
it would feel like the world changing its rules.
like waking up and realizing the sky had decided not to be blue anymore.
like discovering gravity had quietly stopped working and nobody else thought it was strange.
you are the first person i knew.
not the first person i met.
the first person.
before memories.
before language.
before we knew how to be separate.
there was you.
and maybe some part of me has spent my whole life trying to find the line between where you end and where i begin.
because i love you.
and sometimes i hate that i love you this much.
(i hate that there is a part of me that feels safer admitting this on paper than saying it to you.)
because you make it so easy.
you love people like breathing.
sometimes you remind me of a dog.
not because you are simple.
because you are loyal in a way that almost hurts to watch.
the kind that hears someone coming and runs before they even call.
the kind that gives affection without asking if it will be returned.
the kind that believes every person has something worth loving.
and i love that about you.
i do.
but sometimes, selfishly, i wanted to be the only person you ran toward.
sometimes i wanted to shake you and ask:
am i not special to you?
am i just another person you love?
and i know how unfair that sounds.
because your heart being big was never a betrayal.
your kindness was never something you did to hurt me.
but sometimes the thing i loved most about you became the thing that made me feel smallest.
because everyone gets to have a piece of you.
and i know that is beautiful.
i know.
but there were moments when i wanted one thing in this world that belonged only to me.
one thing i did not have to share.
and i am ashamed that sometimes that thing was you.
because you were never mine.
not really.
you were never an object i could keep.
you were a person.
a whole person.
and maybe that was the lesson i was always supposed to learn.
that loving someone does not mean holding them so tightly they cannot reach anyone else.
it means trusting that they can run toward the world and still come back home.
because somehow, after everything,
you still do.
even after fights.
even after sharp words.
even after i become cold and you become fire.
you still come back.
you still find my hand.
you still sit beside me like the distance between us was never real.
and maybe that is what scares me most.
not that you will stop loving me.
but that one day you will learn how to live without needing to come back.
and i will have to learn too.
but if i am being honest,
i do not know who i am in a world where you are only a part of it.
because you were there before i knew what a world was.
and i think some part of me will always believe
that a world without you
is not a world i know.