“My sweet Neptune, why are you drifting away?”

“I swear I used to know you, used to trace your footsteps like constellations, I still wear your old sweaters just to feel close to the warmth you left behind. But now you feel like a stranger, one I’m too scared to call by name.

Your eyes drift past me, not cruel, just distant. And god, how no one warns you that being the youngest is a curse, just one disguised in pretty bows. You watch everyone you love most run out of childhood before you, leaving you behind in rooms that still echo with their laughter and my unanswered questions. As the walls grow tired of holding our memories.

You grew up first, but I grew up fast, and you grew away.

And now I’m stuck holding memories that don’t match your face, trying to stitch together a version of you that still braids my hair, that still calls me sissy. But you don’t braid anything now, your hands are too full, full of responsibilities, new friends, new worlds, worlds that have no room for me anymore.

And I want to scream, “Please, please don’t forget me, please don’t leave me again.” But it’s too late, and the words choke me. Because younger siblings learn quickly, that begging makes you look small, and we try so freaking hard not to look small.

Tell me, does growing up always steal someone? Because I’d trade every birthday I ever had, for you to look at me the way you used to, if it meant you would look at me like I wasn’t a disease, like I wasn’t a reminder of the childhood you outgrew.

I don’t want this new you, I don’t want this stranger, who shares your smile but not your softness. I want my sissy back, the one the years took back, the one time won’t return.

And I hate being the youngest, because it means I’m the last to accept that you’re gone, and the first to feel the ache of watching you grow into someone who can live without me. Why are you drifting away? Please stop.”

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