–What is my name?
–You are Melissa. I am Absynthia.
–We are two?
–No. You are one, I am one. Together we are still one. We cannot be divided.
–What do they call us, then?
–They call us the Twin. But our real name is Errata.
Two heads, two halves of the body. Two necks, two shoulders, two arms, two legs, two lungs. Four eyes, four ears, two brains, a single heart. Two tongues, two hands, two breasts, a single sex. Two mouths to feed one stomach.
–How did this happen?
–It could have been anything. We should have been anything but this.
–What could be better? It’s every wit’s first thought about two heads . . .
–But on second thought . . .
–Yes . . .
–One of us had a second body and lost it to the first. We were like Jacob and Esau, struggling in the womb.
–It might have been better for history had those two been like us.
–History? One scroll out of many. We could give birth to something else, I feel it in our bones.
–Before we rejoined we were little more than clusters of potential.
–Little Gordian knots. Little clumps of this and that, bundled with yarn, fastened with a charm, stuck in a little skin sack.
–We dwelt in possibility?
–Are dwelling there still. They could have refused us at birth . . .
On a bicycle flying through the intersections, the lights turning green at their approach. One looks right, one left. Peddling, braking, shifting gears without a thought.
–It was a last-minute decision.
–The angels were asleep at the switch.
–Or God?
–Not if we know what’s good for us. God puts an end to questioning.
–What is the end of questioning, then?
–You laugh and I’ll weep. We’ll both menstruate. That way we’ll cover all the bases.
–Before we had words, could we hear each other’s thoughts?
–The pattern was there, unrecognized. We knew, but we didn’t know that we knew.
–Nothing’s really changed then, except now
–we are one step farther from the back door
–we came in by. But
–the sun’s gonna shine. The wind’s
–gonna rise.
–Mmm-hmm.