Valhalla

I never would have married you if I had known you were my sister. Or is that true? People spend years of their lives and thousands of their dollars in therapy to rake their parents over the coals, but really I think our parents gave us the best thing they knew how. Their lies. Is not the comfort of all humanity built on lies?

Father - you called him John growing up - loved me; he loved you, too, I have no doubt. Mother - Kathleen - was ill; we were more than she could bear. Quite literally. And so, lies stepped in and you were sent away. I had no memory of you, my twin. We were together for nine months and seventeen minutes.

And yet, when I met you the first time, I knew you. Our years apart vanished in an instant, and everything Father had told me fell into place like a beautiful mosaic. The girl in Oregon was my cousin; she was fragile, and that was why she couldn't come to us, why Father had to go to her, without me, because she was excitable around children her age. These untruths that he wove around us kept us safe for one another.

I am not angry at him, far from it. He did what he knew was best. He would, of course, not understand what happened after we finally met, but in his own way, he had had a part in it, for he had crafted you in my mind and my heart, a faraway valkyrie to come and collect my mortal soul, to wing upward together, entwined, twinned, united.