THE SWAP

LENNI SANDERS

 

The results are in. You, of this address, of this name, are me in another body. We both agreed to this, paid a small fee to find our doubles. We don’t want to meet. I send these books to you wrapped in a cloth of velvet, inside a rat cage. The rat is the ferryman who passes on my message – what to read at night, what in the morning, comforts for heartbreak, what will be funny and when. I presume my rat arrives for you the same day your rat gets here. She bites me then recommends the salve: a poem by someone I have never heard of. God bless this faultless algorithm. I have always been reading your books, which delight and haunt me. Every day I find differences which prove we are not exactly alike. My rat spoke with my voice. Does yours? On my deathbed a hundred years later I find out you never existed. Well who sent me these books? And where is my rat?

 

Records for Lenni Sanders