35: Double

I saw her once in National Geographic, a child growing up amidst the civil war of Eastern Europe, her straggly brown hair and round eyes the mirror of my own. I didn’t show anyone, knowing how my brother sneered at my seriousness, knowing this girl was one of the sacred sufferers for whom my mother prayed. Any comparison to me invited scorn. Instead I stared until the afternoon light faded. I was not transformed, didn’t suddenly recognize myself as one of a human tribe, but, instead, understood our separation, my unrecorded unreality, the sheer randomness of my birth. I could be anyone.