Poor unloved one, I've been thinking about you this week. Red-headed and unwanted, or rather wanted until. Wanted until you weren't, until the golden child came along, relatively perfect, whereupon you were backstoried into a hatefulness or at least an unlikeableness that extended well before your decision-making ability. Kicking so hard in the womb, she said, as if you'd honestly known what was going on outside and had the agency to respond. She certainly didn't like you very much, did she? You hadn't done anything good or bad, it says so in the story, but still she was set against you. Over the years you learned somehow to forgive the one who took your place. Who wouldn't give you food because you were hungry but traded what you probably thought was hyperbole. A birthright for a bowl of beans, and not even magic beans. Of course you didn't mean it. Clutching at your heels from the start, that one, always trying to squeeze past you or to at least take whatever was rightfully yours from your hands before the shadow even crossed your palms. Not their doing, and so you forgive them. Her doing, you said for years, her justifications, her impersonations, her clever tricks. But in the end it was the loss of the love you thought was yours that stung the most. It should have been yours; the corn, the wine, the blessing, the love. Sorry, he said, I already gave it away. Nothing for me, you wailed, and the answer was nothing. Years of resentment for that, but then you went on to build your own kingdom, if only to prove that you never needed theirs. After all why should you ever have it easy? And this does seem to be the point, that you don't get given what you can get for yourself. My contemporary concept of fair was spun much later, from finer wool. I was telling your story to my friend who looked at me in disbelief. But surely no parent, she said, surely no loving parent. Surely not. I understand her disbelief; after all from such seeds sprang the roots of my own lack of faith. Surely no loving parent, and why be loyal to one who so clearly doesn't love us very much, if at all? Your story continues elsewhere; I hope you found a happier ending than a cave, or that before the cave there was a woman or two who nestled against the soft cushion of you, loved you for the man you became, and helped you put aside the people you were never going to be good enough for, anyway. I'd wish that for anyone. 

This is the one about you, finally, the one you keep waiting for me to write. The one in which I lay bare my heart, the whole story. I begin at the beginning with the richness of detail you've come to expect when wading through all the words that are not about you, and finally the details are delicious to you because finally they are about you, finally you see yourself reflected in the mirror I am holding up to you, again, the mirror of me. And I am invisible when I'm looking at you, which is how you prefer me, as it affords a better view of you. From the beginning we progress forward, chronologically and logically and I'd make a pun about crones but I know this doesn't interest you so never mind. Never never mind. How I do keep creeping in but yes, this is the one about you that you've clearly been so impatiently waiting for. The one where I reveal all the secrets about you, and though the secrets are in my heart which I think makes them mine they are of course yours, about you, these tender dears. Are you paying attention? It's okay, you don't have to pay attention to me, but this is the one I am writing about you, so you should pay attention to this. You should feel like you're going to be rewarded. For all the times I spoke and you listened in the hopes of hearing your own name come from my mouth, all the times I wrote and you read it and hoped to see your name, here it is: your name. A description of your face, your eyes, how the vulnerable spaces near the bone hold the light and naturally my attention. There, doesn't that feel nice. I expect it feels nice to have someone's attention entirely directed at you, their words repeating back what you've said so that you know they were listening, their eyes reflecting back what they see so that you know you've been seen, their hands touching the parts of you that most wish to be touched and asking nothing in return so that you know they were only ever thinking about you. Listen I get greedy too sometimes, I'm not saying it's wrong. I will talk about your skin, the alignment of limbs, the sinew and muscle, the beauty of you, I will even tell the story of how it felt to touch you even if that only or mostly occurred in my imagination. This is the one about you and I want you to have the full experience. I am telling it all, about the nights I woke up weeping or sometimes though less frequently laughing from the middle of dream about you. This is the one where I tell you what that dream was about, how the tears (or, albeit less frequently, the laughs) pulled me from that dream and caught the glinting light of the whole day. In this one, the one you've been waiting for, the one that is all about you, I tell my version of the story of us except it is the story of you to you, and you rest your finger against your chin and read each word and continue to wait to see the whole truth and feel whatever it is you expect to feel when I finally stop fucking around in my own feelings and reflections and get to the very important part that is all about you. That part is coming. It's here. That was it.