A Youngest Child’s Elegy

You’re born third,
a punchline to a joke you don’t yet understand.
You don’t know yet that you’ll spend the next 25 years trying to catch up.
In fact, you don’t know anything.

You can hold your own.
That’s not a worry for you.
Maybe because you have been trying to measure up
To expectations that nobody set for you.

You are told to not let them get a rise out of you,
but all you really want is to be respected.
All you really want to be in step.
It doesn’t help that your brothers have long legs
And a 3 and 6 year head start.

You will grow annoyed
and then indifferent
to the incessant question:
“Are you Patrick and Sean’s sister?”

They tell you that the age difference
will grow smaller as you age.
Six years seems insurmountable in grade school,
but like peanuts in your 50s.

But they forget to tell you that as age distance shrinks
In proportion to life lived,
Physical distance grows as we pack up
And move to different cities or different countries.

You get to adulthood and you’ve caught up.
But you don’t get a blue ribbon or a gold star
to bring home and show to anyone.
And now you’re on your own and there’s no one to show anyway.

So you feel left behind in a totally different way.

Siblings are built in friends.
And when you’re the youngest,
They’ve been around literally your whole life.
And so when they disappear it hurts all the more.

But you also realize that trying to catch up to them made you the person you are.

You’re funny
because you wanted to make them laugh.

You wanted to get onstage
because you wanted to be up there with them.

You’re smart
because you wanted to be able to talk at your level.

Hell, you’re on twitter,
because they’re on Twitter.
And all three of you are worse for it.

Two brothers walk into a bar.
Their sister runs in behind them, but is carded at the door.