I hate you.
You’re awful.
You make me cringe
with your superficiality.
Your gashing remarks
slice in quick and deep
with a purposeful, knowing blade,
leaving an astonished wound
that not even the gentlest hand
could ever stitch up.

We’re quite different,
the two of us.
You, the cookie-cutter
and I, the happily disproportionate cookie--
I will never meet your standards.

But I have learned to move on;
to ignore these wounds.
And I know full well
I gave a few slices right back.
It’s all part of this whole game
of growing up together.

Now I think back
to those woozily late Christmas Eves
when we were the only kids at the party
Every.
Single.
Time.
And we would hide out under
the dining room table, snickering--
stealing all the adults’ shoes.
Two little runt-sized-shoe-stealing bandits--
partners in crime.
We were all each other had.

And years from now,
when Mom and Dad are gone
and all our relatives have moved away,
we’ll have to make the best of being
all each other has
yet again.

Okay,
I miss you.
The house is quiet without you.
(Don’t get me wrong; you’re still kind of awful)
But please come back and visit again soon.