second year twin

my brother was born two years and one day after me. i tell people we are twins, not the identical but the kind that look different from each other but still share everything. i tell people that i was born quickly and i came out fast but my brother was a whole day after me. i erase the first two years of my life. i can't remember them anyway, except for a memory that is foggy, like an old movie will most of the screen blacked out except for a circle in the middle, of sitting on a chair with my grandma, looking down a long white hall. this was the day my brother was born, the day after my second birthday where i am told there was a cake with a big two candle on it and it is true. i have seen the picture of me blowing it out, of my mom about to give birth.
i tell them that it took him a day to come out and that once he did he was a meconium stain baby. he almost died, i say, raising my eyebrows. i was almost one half of a set of twins. and i imagine what that would be like, to know that for a short time there was someone else who was you, or shared everything with you, alive on the earth. i imagine that i would feel like i always was walking around with a gaping hole on one side of me, waiting to be filled. i imagine that there would be no way for him to be completely dead, because i am still alive.
but he didn't die, just came out slow and crossed-eyed. i tell them how happy my mom was to have two healthy babies, a beautiful little girl, with perfect, tan skin and a cross-eyed baby boy who almost died. and as we grew up we fought like siblings and we weren't twins. he was my younger brother. he was annoying. he melted my barbie's hair on the woodstove, he embarrassed me in front of my friends, he always had a kool-aid moustache, he carried the cat around by its neck. but now that we are older i know he is my twin. i know that if he would have died i would be walking around with a big gaping hole in one side of me, waiting for it to be filled.