"Cut Ties"

It was summer over ten years ago and I was perched

on a banana boat in the middle of the Atlantic ocean,

in-between my older cousin Megan and younger cousin Tia.

Water splashed on my face as the back of the boat sprayed us,

like that one time we all ran through the sprinklers,

and Megan was laughing so hard she couldn't

catch her breath, even for just a quick second, to tell us that she had

peed her bathing suit bottoms after our banana became airborne from the wake.

This was our annual family vacation to the Bahamas

with my dad's two brothers and their wives and kids.

That was happiness for me at age eight.

Now, I no longer know that happiness,

because my cousins and I no longer speak.

I used to believe family over anything and no,

that wasn't cliché of me to say because they had my back

and whoever has your back should be above anyone else.

I remember when they stood up for me when my mom

thought I was too young to go to the movies with them unsupervised

or that time when they confronted the guy at school

who made me cry because he said that I had too big of a nose.

But there comes a day when people make decisions

that hurt more than help

and sometimes, those decisions create gaps

in relationships that fill the absence of trust.

I now know blood cannot automatically mean trust

because when I trusted that my cousin not tell anyone

that I had an abortion, they did exactly opposite.

I'm not perfect and I know they aren't either, but if the tables were turned

all hell would break loose. Funny how things really work for my family.

Trust must be earned, respected, and held to the highest

of standards, standards my cousins no longer held.

~

"The Reflection"

I've never even said this out loud to myself

or told anyone what I have always felt

because I was embarrassed of the thought.

Since I can remember, every time I used to look into the mirror,

I saw you in my own reflection. Our hair color was the same,

our eye color the same, our height the same, even our last name the same.

Yet there was one huge difference, the difference that made me so

self-conscious to see so much of you in me.

Our minds weren't the same.

I always knew you were different, when all the cousins

would get together when we were younger, you were always

a little behind, a little on the outside.

When we got older, old enough to understand, we

were told that you were special. That you might be around

the same age as us, but your mind was and always would be,

like a seven-year-old.

You were aggressive, out of control at times, I

used to try and just avoid you.

You would give me the worst nuggies every time

I saw you and just get in my face and laugh when it hurt.

I didn't want to look like you because looking like you

meant I would be like you. I tried to erase

that image from my head. I felt not telling anyone

how I felt would change the way I felt.

For years and years, I did everything in my will-power

to look in the mirror and not see you there too.

And what a fucking idiot I was.

Because in 2014 you passed away from a seizure

in the bathtub, at a group home I never even visited you at.

And now all I want is to be able to see you in me

because I miss you. I miss how your brown hair was

always messier than mine because you just didn't care.

I miss the way your eyes lit up when you got to spend

time with your cousins, even when we would leave you out.

I miss Anna Paspalakis.

And the most ironic part is that now I'm proud to look like you

because if looking like you means that I am like you,

then nothing would serve as a greater honor to me.

Because you were strong. Strong-minded,

strong-willed, and a strong-survivor of your condition.

Now I will be strong like you, for both of us, forever.