"my sister wears the asme face as me"

"my sister wears the same face as me" by Bee

Artwork by Nika

my sister wears the same face as me. 

not in a weird way. she’s not some eldritch horror, duplicating my body and wearing it as her own. well, she did split off from me. so maybe she’s closer to eldritch horror than we thought. (birdie, that’s a joke. don’t hate me.)

no, no. i am not being haunted by a skinwalker, i am just a twin. an identical twin. 

identical twins apparently aren’t genetic, but once one set shows up, families are more likely to have recurring instances of identical twins. in my family, my sister and i were the first of recent times, setting the tie to our past and future pairs.

i feel a sense of comfort and connection knowing that there are so many myths regarding twins. apollo and artemis, castor and pollux, frey and freyja. they come from all religions, all walks of life. these ancient twins did so much together - they’ve been held together by time and space, always to remain part of a whole. 

sometimes i think i dislike being part of that whole. when someone mixes us up, calls us the wrong name, we always protest - i am not my sister, she is not me. i am who i am, separate of my sister. i have separate interests, a separate style. we have different hobbies, different styles of communication, different love. 

but am i really separate? would i be who i am without her? 

has she not helped shape my communication, my interests, my style?

has she not given me everything i have in this life?

if you strip me down to my basest form, i am a twin. from the very moment of conception, my sister and i shared one egg. we were split from that one egg, and given the same place to live for our nine month stay, incubating in our mother. prior to having names, we were just ‘baby a’ and ‘baby b’, separated in form only by two small letters. as we were welcomed into the world, our letters switched, mixing up our names from the first moment, the first breath. we have been mixed, thought of as interchangeable from the first time anyone laid eyes on us. 

everything i’ve ever done is done through the lens of how my sister would see me. it’s not always great for me – it can lead to months of anxiety and depression at a time, worried that my sister would dislike me for a decision i made – but she’s always right, always knows what would be best for me, even if i don’t know it at the time. 

my mother says she’s never seen anyone make me laugh harder than my sister, even when no one else thinks it’s funny. she says that when we were younger, i would stick up for my sister when she got in trouble, even when i knew she was in the wrong. i think i still do it; she’s still the stubborn little ass she’s always been.

my sister and i have always held more love for each other, more of a connection to each other than any other. even as we’ve grown and separated our identities from each other, i’ve never found anyone who understands me the way she does. 

there is a myth i’ve heard of, one about faces. it says that the face you wear in your current life is the face of the person you loved the most in a previous one. 

in this life, my sister is destined to be the one i will always love most. i will always wear her face, and she will wear mine. in the next, i hope to find the person that wears the same face as mine, so i will know the love of my sister once again.