Untwined

Stacy and Tracy were as identical as twins could be but psyche was where the two parted ways, an unsettling contrast with other parents' experience raising paired children.


Stacy's main interest was always Stacy, a spiteful core within that despised someone else in life being mirror-imaged, as if stealing part of her soul along with her identity.


Stacy often jumped rope with friends, insisting and forcing the issue that Tracy was barred from participating. So Tracy would play on the nearby swing-set's 'monkey bars', feigning nonchalance and often trying so many cartwheels the rompers on her slight frame hung like grass-stained testimonials to skidded failure.


No little girl had a stronger desire to jump blue-bells and double-Dutch with her sister and friends, but Tracy's diversions proved to be satisfying enough to avoid acting-out against her sister's inexplicable and ever-present mean streak.


A felony drug conviction denied Stacy's passport application to attend the 2016 Olympic Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro and, as the U.S. flag was raised simultaneous to goosebumps on Tracy's arms--her neck stringed with the adornment of the silver medal in overall women's gymnastics--back home, that moment marked a pink-braided rope from childhood swinging slowly to a stop from its tether on a deserted yard's swing-set, straining from 157 pounds of listless, voiceless remorse.