It was like this.  When I was that age,  I wanted her.  So I told her so, and she learned her suspicion at my skinny body.

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          She loved me,  but I couldn’t surrender.  She had her hands on my shoulders and she was clasping me and tearing me toward her stove.  But I grasped her skinny arms in my fingers and I shook her and said,  “I don’t believe you! You’re only made of water!”

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          And she grinned at me and her black eyes gleamed,  but she was already dissolving and starting to pour out,  like a balloon that got unknotted.  And I was outside the house again,  looking in the window. 

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          And I blinked,  and I was there with her,  and I made it.

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          But now I couldn’t remember which event had been real—running into the empty house, the double house—or going into the woods and finding the witch in her cabin. Because it might have been in reverse.  I might have really been in the witch’s house and have fallen asleep in her arms. And then have dreamt I was back in my old neighborhood,  running through.