My twin brother

Essien Isaac

Essien Isaac's Profile

Essien Isaac

Friday 29 May 2026

My twin brother

Nobody knows I have a twin brother.

I tried to tell Mama when I was small.

I pulled at her wrapper while she was cooking.

"Mama, he is here. He follows me everywhere."

She would put her hand on my forehead

and say I had been dreaming again.

Then she would send me to bed hungry.

At school I drew the two of us.

Two stick boys holding hands under a bent sun.

The teacher said it was worrying.

She called my parents in.

That night my father beat me with his belt

and I cried out, "But he is real, he is standing right there.

Tell them. Tell them you are real."

My twin stayed quiet.

He always stays quiet in the daytime.

They took me to see Pastor Jacob.

He poured oil on my head.

It ran into my eyes and stung.

He shouted at the spirit to leave me.

My twin just stood by the window

shaking his head softly.

I wanted to shout at him to help us.

But I had begun to learn.

I had begun to keep quiet.

So I stopped speaking about him when the sun was up.

But at night.

At night it is different.

When the moon drags itself up all slow and heavy

and the streetlights spill their weak yellow light,

I walk.

And he is there.

My twin.

Stretching out long and dark beside me.

Stepping where I step.

Like he has always done.

And I whisper to him.

"I am sorry they do not believe us.

Sorry Mama locks the door early now.

Sorry my father's hands feel far away from me.

They do not want me to bring you inside."

He does not speak back.

But he stays.

Sometimes I kneel on the roadside

and I trace his outline with my finger

where he falls across the stones.

"One day," I tell him, "I will build us a house

where you can stand beside me under a real roof

and nobody will call it madness."

He grows and shrinks as I walk under the streetlights.

I think this is his way of nodding.

Last night I saw Mama watching me from the veranda.

She must have heard me talking to the dark.

Her face held something I still cannot name.

Not anger. Not fear. Something wetter.

She did not shout at me.

She just stood there.

Hugging herself against the cold night air.

And I wanted to call out to her.

Look Mama.

See him now.

He has been here the whole time.

He walks me home when you are too angry to look at me.

He stays when every other person leaves the room.

He is my brother, Mama.

The only one who never let me go.

Then one evening

Mama found me in the backyard.

The sun was falling behind the fence

and my twin was stretched out long on the ground beside me.

I was talking to him.

I did not hear her come.

"Who are you talking to?"

Her voice was tired.

Not angry like before.

Just tired.

I pointed.

"Him. My twin brother."

She looked at the ground.

She looked at me.

She looked at the ground again.

And something in her face changed.

She walked closer.

She bent down.

She put her hand on the ground

where my brother lay.

Her fingers touched the dark shape

and she held them there for a long time.

"Isaac," she said.

And her voice was breaking.

"Isaac, this is not a person.

This is a shadow.

It is your own shadow."

I said, "That is what I have been telling you.

He follows me everywhere.

He never leaves me."

She sat down on the ground.

Right there in the dust.

My mother who never sits on the ground.

"My son," she said.

"My son, a shadow is something everyone has.

It is made when your body blocks the light.

It is a part of you.

Not another person.

Not a spirit.

Just light hitting your body

and making a dark copy on the floor."

I looked at my twin.

He did not look like a copy.

He looked like a brother.

"But he moves when I move," I said.

"He stays when everyone else leaves."

Mama's eyes were wet now.

"Because he is you, Isaac.

He has always been you.

And we have been beating you

for not knowing what we never taught you.

We did not know you could not see the difference.

We did not know."

She called for my father.

He came out with his hands still wet from washing.

He saw Mama on the ground.

He saw me standing over my twin.

He saw.

"Emeka," Mama said.

"Come and see what we have done."

My father walked over.

He looked at the dark shape on the ground.

He looked at my face.

And I saw a grown man's eyes fill up

with something I cannot find a word for.

"All this time," he said.

"All this time he was telling us the truth

and we beat him for it."

He knelt down.

My father who never kneels.

"My son," he said.

"Forgive me.

Forgive your mother.

We thought you were touched in the head.

We thought something evil was following you.

We did not know you were just seeing things

the way a child sees things

before the world teaches him to see differently."

Mama was crying now.

Not hiding it.

Just letting it fall.

"We beat you," she said.

"We called the pastor.

We poured oil on you.

We sent you to bed hungry.

And all the while you were just a boy

who did not understand the difference

between a person and a shadow."

She reached out and touched my face.

"The doctors must have missed it when you were small.

Something in your eyes.

Something in the way you see the world.

And we punished you for it.

We punished you for being born this way."

I looked at my twin on the ground.

He was getting longer as the sun sank lower.

He looked like he was stretching

toward my parents.

"He never hit me," I said.

"He never called me mad.

He never locked the door."

My father put his hand on my shoulder.

"I know," he said.

"I know now.

And I am sorry.

We are both sorry.

We will spend the rest of our days

being sorry."

Mama stood up and took my hand.

"Can you forgive us?" she asked.

I looked at my twin.

He gave no answer.

He just stayed beside me.

The way he always has.

"I will try," I said.

And that night

for the first time

I walked into the house

and my twin came with me

on the walls

on the floor

under the light of the kitchen bulb

and nobody shouted.

Nobody called the pastor.

My mother just pointed at the wall

where my brother lay sleeping against the plaster

and she said,

"Welcome home."

She was talking to him.

And for the first time in my life

I did not feel like a boy with a secret.

I felt like a boy with a family.

All of us.

Together.

Even the ones made of light and darkness.

Even the ones who only show up

when the sun decides

to pull our doubles out of us

and lay them gently on the ground.

Essien Isaac's Profile

My twin brother

Trending Now

Most Rated Poems

Recently Joined

FPG Feeds