For the longest time, I couldn't use the word twin. Not because it doesn't apply to us---Brian and I were in fact born five minutes apart---but because it's freighted with so much significance, with a romance bordering on mysticism. We talk, in our culture, of the special connection, the irrevocable, unimpeachable bond twins are supposed to have, and it's always felt wrong, because he died when we were four days old, to claim him that way. Even brother, though it's correct, feels too intimate: to put Brian in the same category as my younger, living siblings, with whom I share so much, seems unfair.

There's no one term for what he is to me: he's myth and rumor, ghost and figment, rival, mirror. Privately, until about a year ago, I called him my womb-mate, which (although it's both entirely accurate and appealingly casual, a little acid to dilute my longing---someone important is missing, it says, not that I care) feels silly to me now, its nonchalance too vehement. I never said it aloud to anyone, but still.

A year from today, I will be thirty. I am too old, now, not to deal honestly with him. They're only six words: "my twin brother Brian, who died." They shouldn't be so hard to say, but they are.

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