I bought her at a garage sale because she looks just like me. I place her in various parts of the house depending on the time of day. Sometimes she’s at the kitchen table in her bathrobe, a plate of eggs and newspaper in front of her. Other times she’s kneeling on the lawn next to the flower bed, gardening hat on her head. Most evenings she sits on my bed with the eiderdown tucked around her, a vase of red poppies on the nightstand. Every night I brush her black hair, so dark it swallows light like the bottom of the sea. Sometimes she reads, a book open on her lap, head bowed. Her arms are always bent at the elbow, hands in front of her face like a surgeon waiting for her gloves. Every now and then I catch a glimpse of our reflections in the mirror, I’m never sure which of us is real. Mornings, when the light slices her body in half, turns her face lustrous, I think of alabaster Madonnas weeping in rapture.

My mother told me I was cut from a bolt of cloth, mirrored halves of my body splayed open on her sewing table. She traced my skull, measured my arms and legs. Finally, she stitched me closed, black seams crisscrossing my palms, the backs of my calves, like tiny railroad tracks.

I only had the moths for company, shared the flat with them. How they clung to every surface like brown velvet petals. How the night grew dark with their fluttering. Light filtered in as if through a thick curtain. I grew accustomed to the gloom. On cold nights we huddled in front of the fireplace, I under a coarse blanket, moths forming a dark border around it like sentinels. Sometimes I read aloud—to myself or them, I’m still not sure—the sound of my voice soothed their trembling. When I undressed for bed, their wings cast shadows on my skin. They swirled around the room as I slept, alighting on my thigh, an upturned palm, my closed eyes, like a kiss.