When I left for boarding school at fourteen,
I didn’t know I was taking a part of your life with me.
I thought I was leaving behind only a full house, a table, a childhood.
But you stayed there, in the middle of the storm,
with a brush in your hand and a world on your shoulders.
And you were the sister who became a mother too soon.
The one who washed our jeans on the wooden board,
scrubbing not just the dirt, but the helplessness of a lost childhood.
The one who divided a piece of bread into eight equal slices
and made sure the others ate before you.
You wore my clothes with a dignity that later made me ashamed,
when I understood you never had the luxury of choosing.
You followed me everywhere,
not out of insecurity, but out of love;
the kind of love that doesn’t ask, it simply stays.
When I dreamed of “escaping”, as you like to say,
you stayed and kept the house together,
with your arms full of children,
with days that never seemed to end.
Years later, I understood
that the price of my freedom
was your childhood.
That every step I took away
was supported by your bare feet
on the floor of our home.
You are the part of me that never left.
You are proof that true love makes no noise,
doesn’t boast, doesn’t expect reward.
It simply stays there, between a bowl of water,
a pot of meatball soup,
and a tired smile that says: we made it today, too.
If I learned to write with a pen,
it’s because you wrote our story with silence and with deed.
If I was able to leave,
it’s because you stayed.
And if today I can love with gentleness,
it’s because I was first loved, without words,
by you.
