Behind the Curtain Where I Stand

We were never so close, not the way
some siblings are, but you loved me
in ways I didn’t understand then,
in ways I am only now just learning to name.

Do you remember being young,
and how you painted me as an elephant,
and we performed our grand circus act
under our parent’s smiles?

I also remember quiet things.
Your whispers, and all the times you’d say,
“I did it. Not him.”
You knew what was coming,
but you took it anyway.

And it wasn’t just that once.
It was always you, there to say, “It was me,”
The wrong turns I made,
you stood in the storm
so I could stay in the sun,
your shoulders heavy with blame
that wasn’t yours alone to carry.
But you did anyway.

You let the audience look at you with anger,
so they could look at me with love.
You let yourself be outcast,
so I could be welcomed,
your hands full of the weight of my mistakes,
your heart full of something
I am only now beginning to grasp.

How do I thank you for that?
For the way you gave yourself away,
and for the pieces of yourself you let fall,
so I could remain whole.

And though I never said it then,
and though I don’t know how to say it now:
I see you, and I love you.
Not just for who you are,
but for all the ways you saved me,
even at your own expense.

My quiet and secret hero.
A sister I would’ve chosen,
if given the chance to choose.