She's always been a coathanger of a girl, all gleaming lines and steely eyes, and she's a contradiction, too.
Sometimes when she hugs me I feel our breaths exchange atoms, my arms drape her waist, I squeeze out the seconds and the sound waves between us and I huddle underneath her love, nestled in the safest place between two throbbing oceans.
And sometimes she is caustic, acid, snappingly sharp; she guts me with her disgust and her steel and I am so small, so small, so small.
How do I love this person, this sister of mine? How do I reconcile her drenching love and her scraping need to do good with her spikiness, her teeth, her spite? I want I want I so want to love her without reservation, to cherish every iota of time and space we get to share, to stand our ground in our jagged strip of human history and say: forgive me, love me, I love you.
Scald me if you like, but you should know that it burns, and why do you hurt the people you love?
Katie Wolfteich
[email protected]
Alexandria, VA