My sister always tells me, jokingly, as she always does, 

that seeing as she’s my older sister,

she’s known me for literally my entire life.

 

She says,

“You don’t know me,

you don’t know my story.”

 

She places a hand on her heart, and laughs, 

throwing her head back, not too unlike an actress 

in her theatrics.

 

She insists, grin splitting her face, brows raised,

that she’s lived many days 

before I ever existed,

before my heart began to beat,

before my lungs tasted air,

that she learned so much in those months before,

I could never know what it meant to her

to live.

 

She tells me how 

she was among the first to hold me,

when I was still small enough to gather up in her arms,

how she sang loudly to me 

the only songs she knew,

how she pulled on my hand as we lay in bed 

and pointed up,

counting the glow stars stuck to the ceiling,

how she played hopscotch out back, 

Twinkle Toes scuffing the concrete,

while I sat in the grass nearby.

 

She says,

“You don’t know me,

but I know you.”