Somewhere now she takes off the dress i am putting on. it is evening in the antiworld where she lives. she is forty-five years away from her death, the hole which spit her out into pain, impossible at first, later easing, going, gone. she has unlearned much by now. her skin is firming, her memory sharpens, her hair has grown glossy. she sees without glasses, she falls in love easily. her husband has lost his shuffle, they laugh together. their money shrinks, but their ardor increases. soon her second child will be young enough to fight its way into her body and change its life to monkey to frog to tadpole to cluster of cells to tiny island to nothing. she is making a list: things i will need in the past lipstick shampoo transistor radio sergeant pepper acne cream five-year diary with a lock she is eager, having heard about adolescent love and the freedom of children. she wants to read crime and punishment and ride on a roller coaster without getting sick. i think of her as she will be at fifteen, awkward, too serious. in the mirror i see she uses her left hand to write, her other to open a jar. by now our lives should have crossed. somewhere sometime we must have passed one another like going and coming trains, with both of us looking the other way.