lent me her
sweater,
lip gloss,
boots.
I didn’t want to go
but I owed her—
she’d helped me with my math all morning.
Gabe & Holly
held hands, giggled,
played in the arcade
beforehand.
Max never looked my way,
spent the whole time
on his phone.
On the way out of the movies,
I tripped, spilled soda
on the sweater, boots.
Max just laughed.
When I asked for his napkin,
he told me to get one
myself.
Called me
an idiot.
When Mom asked
what happened to the sweater,
Holly did what she often did:
~~~lied~~~ for me.
Said it was her fault, an accident.
Later,
we sat in her room,
curled knees touching.
She was so angry at Max,
said we should get him back.
Said she wasn’t going to let anyone ignore, tease
me.
My heart swelled
with love for Holly.
Once upon a time,
we were
princesses
making deals
casting spells
facing the world
together.
Once upon a time.
UNEVEN
Dad comes home
blue button-down shirt, rolled at the sleeve
wrinkled around the collar
glasses uneven.
He leans his light arm
on the navy chair in the den
that no one ever sits in.
In my mind,
I take a photo
of the colors
contrasted,
then switch them.
Him blue,
chair white.
“Chemistry, huh?”
he says,
turns off the TV,
asks if he can help.
I look down at my notes,
my drawings,
shrug.
“You hungry?
How about an apple?
Brain food,”
he says.
As he goes to the fridge,
I text Holly.
Dad’s home.
She doesn’t text back but
minutes later
they appear together—
Holly with a new outfit on.
Stefano all smiles.
VERTEBRAE TO VERTEBRAE
An hour later,
Stefano gone
Holly out for a run
Dad cooking,
me still struggling with the same assignment.
Mom enters—6:35 p.m. sharp.
Hangs up her key
on the hook labeled “Mom.”
Walks to the sink.
Washes her hands.
Dad stirs soup, kisses her cheek.
Holly walks in, sweaty,
greets her in the kitchen.
They open 3 seltzers
pop
pop
pop.
I close chemistry. Unfinished.
Move on to math.
I watch them all,
listen in
from my spot in the living room.
Holly tells Mom
she
is running for student council
got moved up to advanced math
is trying for starting goalie.
Mom tells Holly
about work:
“a particularly complex
spinal surgery.”
Reconnecting vertebrae to vertebrae.
Dad smiles at them both.
They don’t look anything alike
Holly, black
Mom, white
but
standing tall
their backbones both
link
success
to
success
to
success.
CALCULATIONS
Mom yells to me from the kitchen:
“Linc, honey, how was your day?”
I look down.
Instead of finding
the surface area
of a cylinder
I’ve colored it in.
“Fine,” I say.
“Any details you care to share?”
Sure. I could tell her:
I failed a pop quiz in chem.
My history teacher’s the hardest one in the school.
Ellery’s parents are letting her take an art elective.
But before I can answer
she sighs deeply
mutters something
and then she says louder:
“Did you hear all of Holly’s exciting news?”
So I erase the cylinder.
Shade it back in.
Listen to Mom & Holly calculate
strategies for success.
I
fill.
And
then erase.
COURAGE
Once—
in eighth grade,
I got up the courage,
asked Dad why
Mom
liked Holly better.
He said, “Don’t be
ridiculous.”
But then
he saw how
upset I was.
A siren wailed. A dog barked.
He sat me down
told me how
when the adoption went through
Mom read everything she could
about how to be a good mother
to an adopted child.
She studied like she was
in med school
again.
Mom was determined
to make up for the fact
that her and Holly’s DNA
didn’t match.
That they would never
look like each other.
But it was different with me.
I was her biological child.
“So what about for me?
What did she do when she found out about me?”
Dad looked at me closely.
A kid cried. A taxi honked.
“She was very excited,”
he said,
and smiled.
It didn’t really
answer
my question
but I never had the courage to ask it
again.
TWO ROUTES
I.
We are twins
(virtual ones)
Holly only four months older,
adopted from Ghana at six months old.
Mom volunteered there
after med school,
doctoring orphaned children.
She knew then
as she bandaged
and vaccinated
she’d return someday
to mother a Ghanaian child
of her own.
The adoption was already set
when they found out:
she was pregnant.
II.
Once I asked
if I was an accident,
Dad smiled, said no—
a marvelous surprise.
III.
Holly & I
used to pretend
we were named after
the New York tunnels
Holland & Lincoln
two routes to the same city.
We would lie down
/side by side/
pretend
to let the world
rush through us,
reach our arms overhead,
tip our fingers
to lightly touch,
our point of convergence.
IV.
Now,
when Mom’s disappointment in me
stains our walls,
when it drowns
out the street noise,
when it cracks
over my skin,
I want to remind her
I’m the one
she carried in her belly.
OVERLAP
Mom
only sees Holly & me
in opposition.
Holly: hardworking.
Linc: careless.
Holly: bright.
Linc: dim.
She spits my name—
Linc
says hers
pigeon-coo soft—
Holly.
And each time
my stomach sinks
wondering if I might ever
be enough—
whether Mom might ever
see where we overlap—
whether she might ever
speak my name
—gently—
like hers.
HOVERING
From my room,
I can hear Holly down the hall
chatting with her best friend Maggs.
Saying something about Stefano
and Saturday.
After she hangs up,
like clockwork
9:45 p.m.
Mom comes into her room
to go over the next day’s schedule.
Ellery texts me an image:
half her big toe
hovering above a blue blanket.
We play a game
where we send
drawings
photos
and the other person creates
a caption for the image.
So I write:
Moon over water.
She texts back a thumbs-up.
My turn:
On my wall, I sketch monster teeth
on a cartoon bunny.
Take a photo.
Her turn to give my image a name.
MORE/LESS
Once Mom’s done with Holly,
she enters my room,
scans over all my homework,
makes sure I’ve finished it all.
She picks up my notebooks,
without asking.
Rubs her temples,
leafs through notes for geometry,
sighs at chemistry.
“Linc, let’s try to start sophomore year off differently.
More learning, less doodling, okay?
You’ll need to work much harder to get off probation.”
She lays my notebook down.
Ellery texts back: Rabid rabbit.
I can’t help but smile.
Mom thinks I’m laughing at her.
Her voice changes
to the one Holly & I used to call
“Mean Queen,” says:
“There’s nothing funny about failure.”
Closes the door
behind her as she leaves.
I never even got
a chance to speak.
ART FOR SCIENTISTS
Lying on my bed, keep drawing on my wall.
I fill in the bunny’s ears.
Give him a field to play in.
Then, lie back,
remember how
once upon a long time ago
Mom was impressed
by my art
my creativity.
She bought me
my first set of
watercolors, brushes.
Used to laugh, say
“how fascinating”
she ended up with a child
who was an artist
when she could only draw
stick figures.
Sometimes, we’d all play school,
me the art teacher,
Holly teaching science,
Mom & Dad, the students.
No matter how hard Mom tried to draw a face,
the features would come out
//lopsided
//uneven.
No matter how hard Mom tried to instill in me
her love of science and math, of school,
fractions
swirled &
fell
shapes
overshadowed
theories.
Through colors & images I could always
say more
than with words & numbers.
Once upon a long time ago
she bought me
my first set of
watercolors, brushes.
But now,
my art is
“just
a distraction.”
SPELL CASTING
I.
Freshman year
Photo 1—
Mom let me take
an elective.
I met a girl
who wore a shirt
with an embroidered fuchsia Pegasus.
Her parents
insisted she go to Ketchum
after years of homeschooling
even though she hated
math & science
(just like I did).
She said she liked
“I’m Ellery, by the way.”
And in that first moment
I couldn’t help but wonder—
could we be the same?
II.
As the year went on,
Ellery switched into 3D Art.
I stuck with photography.
Knew
I was meant
to do more than just
capture a moment—
I was meant to
give the invisible visibility.
I created my own reality
in the digital darkroom
(cutting, transforming, color adjusting, cropping, sharpening),
watching my world come alive.
THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN
It turns out
the differences
between Ellery & me
go beyond art preference:
Her parents,
owners of the Müller Gallery,
let her take art again this year,
they always //encourage// her to
explore her creativity.
She never seems to study,
but she never
seems to fail.
My parents
insist the reason
my GPA slipped below 2.0
last year
was because of my obsession
with my camera,
with my art.
That I did murals instead of math problems,
compositions instead of calculations.
Now,
I have weekly meetings with my advisor,
weekly reports from my teachers.
Every adult
holds me in their
focus,
ready to capture
a negative image
of me.
If only
I were graded
in photography
on artistic merit
I know I could be like Holly
getting
A’s.
A’s.
A’s.
LOST TRACK
Next morning, on the way to school,
I snap photos
a bird’s wing,
an open window,
feet walking.
Holly is tense,
cracks her neck, flicks her wrist,
blinks her eyes too many times.
“Did you vote for me?” she asks
as we walk to the bus.
A thunderbolt crashes into my gut.
I consider lying.
But maybe the truth doesn’t matter?
Maybe she doesn’t really need my vote?
“I forgot,” I admit.
“I meant to
but Ellery showed me her new art project—
we totally lost track of time.”
Holly’s lips move side to side
then—
she picks up the pace.
To show she’s mad.
Crash.
Boom.
SIDELINES
Maggs is already at the bus stop.
We board.
Maggs, mixed race,
her skin’s closer to Holly’s color
than mine.
Looking at us
side by side by side,
you’d see a rainbow.
But—they are part of something
I am not.
They’re busy
talking dresses
for some athlete-scholar luncheon.
Holly, an academic scholar.
Linc, on academic probation.
“You could wear that coral one,”
I offer.
Holly shoots me a look.
“I outgrew it a long time ago.”
I watch the park wind past me.
They move on to soccer.
Holly’s chances
of playing starting goalie.
I picture her
in the goal zone
making save
after save
after save.
Holly, goal-oriented.
Linc, without aim.
Me, on the sidelines,
taking pictures of the grass
how it moves in the wind like waves.
CARRIAGES
The bus crosses east through Central Park.
I look to the leaves
snap shots of the tunnels
the paths that lead
back west—
remember—
when we were eight, Dad brought