It must be the eleventh Maura, the one where you wake up and you see yourself, your now self, your exactly yourself self, staring back at you with your eyes already open. You were wrong about the suiciding Maura, this one is the worst one. She walks half a foot behind you. She brushes your teeth while you brush your teeth, and when you spit into the sink she spits onto your bathroom floor. She finishes your box of Cheerios. She listens while you call in sick to work. She kicks her feet up on your table and sings your favorite songs, she logs in to your laptop and tweets about your headache.

Babies are born with all of their teeth already in their heads, wedged up high above their mouths in double rows. First the baby teeth come down, painfully, through the gums, and later their shadows follow them. The permanent teeth erupt and knock their used-up counterparts aside. They have both been there all along, side by side. This is the kind of thing you think about sometimes.

By the end of the day you want to scream at Maura. You want to grab her by the shoulders and buckle her. I’m alive, your body keeps trying to say, but no one’s listening. I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive. I’m real.

You’re pretty sure you haven’t spoken when Maura swivels her head toward you, your head toward you. “Are you sure?” she asks. “Are you sure your version is the right version?”

* * *

The first and last time you tried to say something really profound to Maura, she was fifteen. This was well before the litany of selves. You were twenty-three, you’d just gotten your job at the school. You were younger, comparatively, though that is always true of the past. You wanted to get her away from your boyfriend, even if he didn’t seem to mind her, notice her, you didn’t like the past and the present breathing so close to each other. But you still wanted to be kind to her. You took her to the park. Like, what did you think you were doing, taking a fifteen-year-old to the park, but you just wanted to sit outside in the sun somewhere, and she sat on the bench beside you. This is true about you, Maura, that you wanted to be kind to her.