Me's.

When I said I wanted a clone army, I really thought they'd all look just like me, except maybe a little thinner and outfitted in hundreds of matching Carmen Sandiego trench coats and heels. Looking back on it, I shouldn't have chosen the one geneticist that seemed a little sentimental, and I should have been suspicious when he asked for baby pictures and locks of hair and exhaustive lists of my hopes and dreams. I assumed that there was some kind of voodoo to genetics. I should have known. 

I mean, my clone army, they're all right. The six year old clone-me wakes me up in the morning and I'm getting fucking awesome at mickey mouse pancakes by now. Fourteen year old clone-me is a little bitch, but if I buy her cigarettes or listen to her talk about the Cure for a while, she usually settles. My eighty year old clone is this docile, fragile bird-person who only wants to sit by the window and mumble about Hegel, so she kind of takes care of herself. We have a big house, and I get a tax break for all the dependents. The 30-40 year olds all have mid-level management jobs, so that's a nice kick-back, and I'm pretty sure the 40-50 year olds will get over their mid-life crises and come back with my hybrid any day now. We have great game nights. I'm not unhappy.

But I can't say it's not a let down. They will never help me storm Serbia or tackle my  childhood enemies at the sound of a dog whistle. We are all goddamn altos, so we will never be able to sing Beach Boys covers and travel the world. To be honest, most of them don't even like me much. On our 22nd birthday, my only legit clone traded all our presents for cash and got reconstructive surgery, a new wardrobe and a $500 dye job. We call her Ingrid now. We argue about who forgot to take the trash out, but otherwise, we have nothing to say to each other. 

Painting by Paul Insect.

Merit.

The only merit badge I earned before I got kicked out of the girl scouts was the "senses" badge. As if we deserved a prize for being cuter than those little scouts without functioning noses or ears or eyes, for being able to tell which part of our tongues tasted the bitter in balsamic vinaigrette or which quarter had been stuck in the freezer or under the hot tap before we touched it. I could not tie my bunny ears or invert a teddy bear's skin to push in the stuffing, but I was, without a doubt, a card-carrying sentient being. 

So I took it seriously. I put my ear to the floorboards of the science room to hear the rattle of electrons inside their respective atoms, and I squinted, hard, into the off-blue center of the sun to feel that instant of fire before I glanced away, overcome by that moment when sight and touch fuse. And I remembered everything, years after I turned in my cookie sale sheets empty (sub-atomic sensation takes up your time). When I die, I will taste the blood in my mouth and thrill at the widening light over my retinas; when we kiss, I will hear your wisdom teeth descending into the velvet dark of your mouth; and I will smell it, that after-rain tinge that stains every molecule of air, after you've gone, or I've forgotten you.

Photo by Dorthe Alstrup.