when i was a freshman in high school i took honors biology,
a course of a subject matter that i would end up seeing for many cumulative semesters.
i chose to pursue that course for the reason anybody actively strives to learn about anything--
in order to answer the lingering questions i had
but only the ones dearest to my heart.

so i took ib bio for you.
i read all the way through another textbook
and took my notes in every lesson
so that when you started doing worse in school, i started doing better
and when you dropped out, i was studying more than ever.

i wanted to be the good counterpart to your bad;
the bad that you couldn't help
as if that would make you healthy.

chapter 8 was genetics
and did you know that we had an equal opportunity at all the same genes?
and only chance dictated that you would be tall and i would be short
or that you would be smart and lazy and i would be a stupid laborer
or even that you would be a boy and i would be a girl.
that was what my lessons said.

but my lessons were wrong.
our genes couldn't have been determined by chance. not in our family.
i don't know if you've noticed this but we are of our parents;
our successful, hard-working father (whose brother is in prison for dealing drugs),
our beautiful and cruel mother (whose sisters' large-nosed faces are stained with laugh lines and sun spots).

i understand why we're so close; as they say, opposites attract
and when you moved back home to become a hospital outpatient,
forced to waste your time in therapy, relearning concepts you already knew
you helped me with chapter 8.
i couldn't work through it on my own, but i passed the test.

i understood what the scientist who wrote my textbook wanted me to know
but still i don't believe him.

because nothing i learned in any of my bio classes can explain
on what merit science has decided
to give me all the happy genes
and give you all the sad ones.