Time Folded Twice

I fall asleep in 2026, a 76 year old woman with a lifetime behind my eyes.

When I open them again, I’m standing on the Cal State LA campus in 1978.

The air is younger.

The sun is brighter.

The voices around me move with the confidence of people who don’t yet know what’s coming.

I recognize everything, the concrete, the breeze, the way the mountains hold the sky.

But my body feels suspended between timelines.

Light. Heavy. Familiar. Unfamiliar.

Students walk past me, laughing, carrying books I once carried.

I want to ask them what year it is, but I already know.

The real question arises quietly:

Am I 28 again, or still 76?

I search for a reflection, a window, a car door, anything that will tell me the truth.

My footsteps echo like they belong to two different women.

I find a glass panel near the library,

its surface holding the light like a question.

I step toward it, breath held.

And the face looking back at me

is neither twenty eight

nor seventy six

but a version of me

I never lived

But remember.