The two girls share a bowl of noodles and plate of fish cakes. I can’t tell if they are twins but they are definitely sisters. There is a special magic siblings share; a bond I’m envious of.

I am the only child, but cousin Roy is only three months older than I, so grandma raised us together. He would give me the egg white from his tea egg and I would give him my yolk. I wasn’t much for pork fat and he didn’t like the lean meat. We always like the opposite of what the other enjoyed the most. He would eat what I didn’t want and vice versa. A simple solution to, “you can’t leave the dinning table until you’ve finished everything on your plate.” We never divvy anything up into this is mine and that is yours; what is mine is of course yours. Some time we would even swap homework. We each handled the subject we excelled in. Once in a while, I did all of his homework. We got in trouble together and I never, ever, not even once, told on him.

We were a part of the whole in our youth. There was no Roy without me and there was no me without him. Everywhere he went, I followed. Then adolescent and the Pacific Ocean separated us. Now, when I return for visits, the shadow of our former selves sits between us; we could remember it all, but its impossible to return as each other’s counterpart, we are too old, our magic didn’t run deep enough. We stare at each other across the divide merely as relations, no longer part of the whole.