Lizzi Potts, my one and true,

Lizzi Potts, I beat for you.

Lizzi Potts, my body sings, but,

Lizzi Potts, my eardrum rings.

Lizzi Potts, I lie awake,

Lizzi Potts, for the sounds you make.

Lizzi Potts may never be

Lizzi Potts if stuck with me.

Lizzi Potts, I'm wrong for you.

Lizzi Potts, what can one do?

Lizzi Potts would keep me near, but,

Lizzi Potts, it's that I fear.

Your force of nature

Your beacon, your light

I was that force,

Or wasn't that so?

Your reason for life

Your greatest feat yet

You were just mine

Back then it was so.

For awhile I was

The dream you once dreamt

As a smaller girl, tender

Heart void of contempt

I hear you around me

And smell you and see you

Yet you're not around me

Still, once it was so.

“That’s why I believe in Heaven. I believe there’s just got to be someplace we haven’t screwed up yet.”

The words flowed like the honey of wisdom from her freshly painted lips, whose corners began to rise as she seemed to find confidence and satisfaction at her own realization.

And, if only just for a moment, I began to reconsider my decision on disbelief.

"What is love?" 

This horrible question which has tortured the hearts and minds of human beings for millennia is one that has yet to be answered for certain by anyone else. Or, if it has, I am unaware of it. When I was six-and-three-quarters years old, I answered it. I don't mean to brag, I just mean to tell the truth. 

I still remember the night I learned of love. I can close my eyes and see it, feel it, smell it all: the dust particles dancing around the beam of light shining from the tiny silver flashlight in my sister's chubby hand; the brownish-purple stain on the sheet pulled over our heads from one of the many nights I watched my mother spill Merlot on her nightgown; the lingering smell of pumpernickel bread, stolen from the dinner table and harbored in a towel under our pillows; and my sister's glowing amber eyes, peering into mine more intently than anyone ever had, or ever has since. 

My mother married two men in her lifetime, each of whom granted her a child. She married my sister's father when she was eighteen, devastatingly beautiful and blissfully unaware of what her future would hold. I only heard my mother mention him once, and she said that it was a mistake, that I must never tell anyone what I'd heard.

It's been more than twenty years since I lay there in bed with my sister, watching in terror as she scratched her thumb so deeply that she broke skin. And as the first droplet of blood emerged, I saw her grin, tug my hand, and press her bloody thumb against the open papercut I'd given myself just hours before. Horrified, I told her to never do that again, that blood spreads diseases like that one that put Uncle Jerry in the hospital last year. "Shh, it's okay," she whispered. "We have the same blood." Seeing me no calmer than the moment prior, she sighed and explained, "All people have blood, Annie. We all bleed the same. And other people's blood can only hurt you if it's different from yours. But we're sisters. So we have the same blood. So mine can't hurt you." And from that moment I knew that I loved her more deeply than any cut, that her blood could never hurt me, and that it was because of that fact that I would never let her know she was a liar.