lulu !!

Sometimes, when I can’t fall asleep and everything is buried under the silence and darkness of the night, I start thinking about what you once told me — about parallel universes.

And maybe I’m a masochist for imagining that somewhere out there, in another universe, we’re together and happy. Or maybe I just like to hurt myself by holding on to the possibility.

Maybe in another universe we did things better. Maybe I let you see how fragile I really am, and you helped me grow.

Maybe in one of them we have a family and you’re holding my hand while I give birth to our little miracle. Because that’s what we want, not just me.

Maybe it’s not even this time. Maybe we’re in ancient Greece and I look at you thinking you’re some kind of offering from Aphrodite.

Maybe the world isn’t what it is now. Maybe we’re not who we are now. Maybe we don’t even have the same names, or faces. Maybe in another universe we’re robots, or animals, or just an idea in some writer’s head.

And when I think about all those possibilities, I know exactly what you’d say; that not in every universe we get to be happy, right?

Somewhere, our story has to end. And I guess I should be glad that in most of the others we’re happy, that I can at least live it in dreams. But I’m not. I’m selfish. I want to feel it here too. I want to know what it’s like to be next to you, to hold your hand as the years go by, to watch your skin — once firm — become fragile.

I want to see the lines form around your eyes, to hear you complain about those tiny wrinkles while I just look at you and smile, thinking I was the one who made you laugh, that I was the one who made you happy, because you didn’t have them before.

I want us to fight over how to decorate the house, over the names of our kids, or dogs, or cats, or whatever you want.

I don’t want to be the only one with this longing.

I know it sounds bad, but I want you to dream about me too, about this different lives. I want you to realize that we’re soulmates, that we weren’t meant to be apart. I want you to feel this emptiness inside, the one that carries your name and eats me alive.

I don’t want to just accept that we’re not together because of the multiverse. Why does it have to be us?

I don’t want some other version of me to be the one who gets to love you forever.

I want it to be me.