Responsibility is part-human, part-monster. It eats at your brain and makes you overthink every selfish act a million times, and I wish my sister told me how she would silently dump that burden on me unconsciously.
My mother told me I was still young a few weeks ago, but when I confronted her with what I knew, I almost saw the scars at the back of her mouth of when her tonsils were removed 25 years ago. I wish my sister told me how growing up is barely noticed.
I sat with my young siblings today, and made them cry with the weight of responsibility they would be facing a few months or years down the road.
I never meant to make them cry.
I wish my sister told me how important school was. For myself. For my father.
I wish she told me how important my family is.
I came across a scrawny worker sweeping a stream of water off the streets in the heat, and I can’t wipe the way he looked from my memory. He looked soulless and beaten. How many rejections and roadblocks has he faced? Why hasn’t my sister told me how it hurts to be rejected and beaten down?
My brother told me I was the best sister in the world, my friends once told me they wished they had someone like me in their household, has my sister ever felt that way?
It’s tedious.
It’s an elephant with the skin of Hades on my shoulders.
I barely remember my sister’s presence. I barely remember how she was.
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TEXT: RAWDHA AHMED
ART: JUMANA AL RAMZI