Twins on separate sides of America are each eating lox on bagels. One has onions, the other doesn't. The one without onions is missing the one with onions, but the one with onions is not missing the one without. They don't know that they're each doing this, eating nearly the same thing at the same time, a kind of thing they weren't raised on, a thing their parents, both bedridden in the same quarrelsome bed by a deficit of the same hard-won vitamin, would to this day call “gaggy” and make that face.
There is some debate about what kind of twins they are. It's a fissure between aesthetics and science. In daylight they look identical, at night paternal. At dusk and dawn they appear as ghosts—they have that much in common. But they enjoy variations of flavor, depths of feeling. One will eat the entire bagel, then press the crumbs into an index finger and eat its traces. The other will wrap up half and save it for later.
Sometimes nobody is at all hungry. Sometimes everything is depthless.
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I was thinking about bagels and two-headed babies and somehow this came out of all that.
Michael--I'm not going to ask you how a two-headed baby can be on separate sides of America or if they are both two-headed babies. I'm just glad someone finally brought the elements of two-headed babies and bagels together --thanks for this *
Bobbi, maybe the twins were split like bagels? I dunno and I'm not going to guess. Thanks for your comment!
Michael, it makes perfect sense that they were split like bagels at birth--that's exactly it--perfect image--
I love this. I personally enjoy exploring identity that is split between different characters, and the relation between them.
The ending is wonderful.