September 21, 1996

I had wanted a sister. Instead, I got you. She offered to let me hold you, and so I did, rocking you back and forth in my bony six year-old arms until you closed your dewy black eyes to sleep. All I noticed then was how scrunched up your face was, like a tiny prune, and I found it difficult to believe that something like you could have popped out of our mother after a scant nine months. On the car ride home, I wondered what life would be like now that I had a sibling.

Fourteen years later, I've decided that I wouldn't trade you for all the sisters in the world. You're the only one who I can still play legos with or pretend my bed is a boat in the middle of a storm-tossed ocean. Around you, there's no mask to put on, no role to play.

I almost lost you. And it would have been my fault.

You're my whole world, Indra. I wouldn't know how to exist if you had died.

And due to my own failings, no less.