Our mother woke up one day with two lives. In the shower, she was one woman, and at breakfast, she was another. At first, we all thought she had lost her mind. She looked perpetually sleep-deprived, washed clean socks, kissed our father goodbye twice. But eventually she learned to live both lives at the same time. One mother slept while the other disappeared in the woods. One gave our father his goodbye kiss while the other came home at dawn in a silver dress, covered in mud. In time, our mother developed new abilities, new secrets. She ate two dinners, two desserts. The baked pears no one wanted. A chocolate cake. She thought in two languages, both English, read us bedtime stories with two different mouths. If the phone rang in the morning she used the first mouth, the first English. But after dark the second mouth took over, its English incomprehensible, spilling across the kitchen like an incantation. When the other life ended, as all other lives must, our mother became a widow in her one life, mourning nothing. As if the funeral had already happened inside of her. What was once whole became unwhole. One dinner, half hunger. One mouth with which to give one kiss, with which she could still taste the frosting. Because he loved her, he took it from her without asking. He couldn’t tell that her skin was a black dress. That when he touched her it felt like he was touching her through fabric, though she sighed.