jasmine lavoie {six} fin

Bonds are cut by blades, not by distance.

That is what I used to tell myself- that is what I deluded myself into believing, because it's easier to lie and play pretend than open your eyes and see the harsh, garish daylight.

Blood is supposed to be thick, but it seems the blood we shared was thinner than air.

We made a promise when our parents were stolen away and we were swept into a forsaken place, the orphanage, that we would always stay together. We promised that love would conquer as the story books said. It's been a year since she left- since she was stolen from me, too. My parents died, drifted away into a void- she may as well be dead, too.

The day Frances was adopted by a family called the Eckharts, we tore a photo of us holding hands. In the photo, we stand against a setting sun and a scarlet sky, with nearly matching red locks pouring down our shoulders from our scalps. We match the horizon- red and gold. Our skin, all fair and flecked with copper, looks golden beneath the slowly dying light.

We match the sky, and we match each other- same noses, same brows, same face. We wear floral dresses down to our knees and white cardigans. I look tiny next to Frances, who reaches tall and elegant to the heavens, while I am several inches shorter and even narrower. She is grace and I am glass.

And thing I cannot stop staring at in the photo- our expressions. Smiles illuminate our faces- it is strange to look at the photo now, to see the dimples on my cheeks. (I have not smiled in a year.) The smile is genuine, too- it touches my eyes. It ignites them. They look so dull now when I peer into the mirror, no longer holding the same fire they once did. They are dead copper. The void expands to my entire being, inside and out.

The moment we tore the photo, the promise was broken. She walked away with a piece of me, and I stayed trapped in the orphanage walls with a piece of her.

Miss Dolores, the owner and manager of the orphanage, says that Frances abandoned me, that she was happy when the Eckharts took her away, because she would live a better life. She says that I shouldn't keep Frances's photo, that I shouldn't look at it every day. I do anyway- I usually listen to Miss Dolores, but I could not bear to fulfill this request. So I hid the photo under my mattress, where she would never find it.

She says that Frances does not love me because she never writes to me or tries to get in contact with me. (I know that she's right.)

After she left, I would mark an X in purple marker over the days that passed by. I kept a tally on the corner of the first page of my favorite book. But then the number rose from one day to six months and I lost track of time- it became a current of wrathful waters, pulling me along while I try to grasp the reeds and twigs lining the shore.

I am patient, but even my patience wears thin
into resentment.

Half of me resents my sister; the other half loves her unconditionally.

- x -

I swore I would leave her behind the day the Levoie family took me away from the orphanage. I swore I would let her go, but when I tried to loosen my grip from the torn photo in my hand, my heart throbbed within my chest.

(Jasmine Vieuxpointe
Jasmine Lavoie)

I slipped it into my bag with all of my books and clothes that Miss Dolores bought for me. She cried when I left- I didn't feel quite the same, but I felt sorry for her.

The Lavoies are a good family- they are not Frances, but they are a good family. They gave me sisters and a brother, and I tried to fill the hole Frances left behind with them. (I never could.) They are my family, too, and they cannot be replaced.

Neither can Frances.

They buy me books and hug me before school and they have enough money to give their children a nice house and enough food- but they are not Frances.

No one can be Frances.