Wanted to Be Your Twin

by Opal Palmer Adisa

A writer as diverse as the breadth of the sea, Opal Palmer Adisa, who hails from Jamaica, blends and fuses genres, creating space for her word-stories to leap and frolic off the page. I Name Me Name (2008), her most recent collection, examines identity through multiple lenses, but always with the aim of both naming and stripping naked the “self.” For more information about Adisa visit her site: www.opalpalmeradisa.com.

i loved when we wore
identical dresses
our hair braided
with the same colored-ribbons

our temperaments were
hill and valley
yours was peppermint
mine red-ginger

you preferred
being curled
on your side like an s
book close to your eyes
breath even body still
except when you turned the pages

i was fearlessly talkative
longed for the horizon
beyond our yard
climbed tress
and swam naked in the canal

together
we hopped around
on one leg giggling
then falling to the ground
swooning under the sun

but we also linked arms
and used a long piece of stick
to beat the bully
who teased us