I came in under the door, as I always do, uninvited, and there she was, doubled. One of her stood breathing, and one of her hung inside the wall, flat, silent, refusing to smell of anything. I reached for the still one first, the smooth cold one, and it would not lift.
No loose hair off its neck, no goosebump, no shiver. It only stared back at the breathing woman with her own eyes, and neither of them moved, and I have never understood how a thing can look at itself and stay.
The living one leaned closer. Fixed a strand behind her ear that I had just pulled free, undoing my only gift. Turned her chin. Held her own gaze the way I can hold nothing. I lifted the collar of her robe and she pressed it flat, annoyed, as if being touched by everywhere at once were a rudeness. She wanted only the one who couldn't touch her.
I brought her things, I always bring things. Woodsmoke from a field two valleys off, the salt of someone crying on a train, a stranger's cigarette. I laid them across her face and she noticed none of it, busy searching the flat cold twin for something I could not carry in.
Then someone slammed a door below and the whole house exhaled and swept me out through the gap, and I took a little warmth off her cheek with me, the way I take everything, without asking.
She never saw me.
She was still looking at the one who stays.