My Twin Journey Poem
Katie is an identical twin who has just graduated from the University of Gloucestershire in Gloucestershire, England. Her dissertation is entitled “My Twinship Journey: A Study that Explores How My Twin Sister and I Use Our Language to Express Our Identities in Relation to the Membership Category of Twinship.” Her research highlights their ongoing differentiation as both sisters confront and work through issues of identity and separateness.
Katie describes how language choice and speech intonations recorded in separate interviews with her sister and herself correlate with emotional conflicts within the twin dynamic. Both women acknowledge feelings of resentment, sadness, and distress that customarily accompany changes within twin relationships.
Katie has graciously granted me permission to share a poem that she has written about her evolving twin connection.
My Twin Journey Poem
We started life hand in hand,
We didn’t need a map and we didn’t have a plan,
The path that we travelled on was level and flat,
We’d always have our parents to help us back,
Now that we’ve got older,
The landscape has changed,
Much like our appearance, our opinions
And the friendships we’ve made,
We rarely hold hands now and there’s no time for games,
We’ve got to grow up now and go separate ways,
I was your compass and you were mine,
But it got to a point where we’d fight all the time,
It made the mountain ahead much harder to climb,
At the cross roads, you took a left and I went right,
We learnt to spread our wings and take flight,
From sharing so many moments, secrets and dreams,
We made our own memories instead of being a team,
They say life is like riding a bicycle, but we rode a tandem,
It’s a lot harder to navigate, you can imagine,
I don’t know what lies in wait for us on this path ahead,
But with you by my side I’m not filled with dread,
So this is our journey let’s have a blast
Because one day we’ll look behind us and say wow, that went fast.