there’s ten versions of me peering through the same hospital door entryway. inside, there’s a mother cradling a newborn in her arms, but barely conscious otherwise. there’s doctors announcing the gender of the baby and the alternate ways of saying “congratulations” filling up the room alongside the smell of antiseptic and the sound of the beeping heart monitor. my sister rushes past us, oblivious to our existence. this is the version of this event that I want to see, according to the version of me on the far left, who has lines etched around the mouth where I don’t, and tight, bushy hair sprouting from her scalp where I have braids dripping off mine.

between us are eight other me’s, all enveloped in the individual stages of life they hail from in their clothes, how they hands fidget, the expression settled onto their face. or that’s what I assume. “we’re not sure if we’re from the same timeline, but it doesn’t really matter,” the me on the far left explains, “, it doesn’t really matter because we all start here regardless,”

we all start here, in this hospital room, recently expelled and coated in blood and gloved hands, with murmurs in a honeyed language reduction made to sooth this screaming human being. it’s 1995, the sun slowly veils the earth in sunrise and the haloing glow shines right on this baby like some divine spotlight. a version of me toying with the dreads spilling over one shoulder and her complexion clear of all imperfections (which makes me hope we do, in fact, share a timeline) walks away at whatever version of this scene she witnesses and wipes away her tears with the gesticular roughness of sandpaper and another me dressed from snapback to sneakers in black attempts to console her but stutters a strung-together psychoanalysis that sounds more like an android trying compute emotional anomaly than an actual human being comforting another.

“is there any reason why we start here?” I ask.

and only the me on the far left responds, “we all need reminders, for some reason. and this is the most harrowing reminder.”

unsurprisingly, seeing ten of myself crowded before some hospital room twenty years in the past grips me a little more than my birth, but that’s the one thing that links my various phases to one another. this ever-changing human mold given to me as my existence became so split apart by life that only birth is our constant. I’m not sure what to make of my birth, and I’m wondering why my fifteen year old self and my seven year old self stand here, the youngest clutching on the tail of the teenager’s shirt. I don’t remember this scene at all, I don’t remember being here prior, yet my older versions do? am I having an existential crisis? is time a concept that even exists right now? what is present? past? is the future even worth anticipating with excitement? and this hand on my shoulder - who is touching me? who is turning me around?

Far Left is smiling at me with exhaustion curling the ends of her mouth. “you think so much. so much, you mind can’t even contain it. your thoughts spill at the mouth at the worst of times, and not even coherently at that.

“forget about logic, just for one moment, and look at that baby. and her family. and recognize what you need to recognize. and then your visit is over,”

I look back at the doorway and realize only three of me stand here - me at twenty, far left, and a slightly younger version of her who is preoccupied with hologram videos and avoiding this ordeal all together.

I look at that baby, sleepy and swaddled in a small blanket and the doctors repeatedly chanting “she survived, she survived,” and complimenting her strong lungs and the passing of the baby from my mother’s arms to my sisters and the closed-eyed face of the child breaking into a small grin, and at curve of the baby’s mouth my chest inhales breath for the first time since I arrived here.

the moon swallows the sun to bathe that baby in lunar radiance and I swallow the ugliness amassed in my throat and I realize it’s my time to leave.

the world turns black and it’s just me and far left and she’s already fading when she asks me “so do you get it? your reminder?”

“no, but I’m inspired,”

as the upcoming heir and the princely carrier of his mother’s good name, the council saw his engagement to this war-bitten excuse of a woman no less than a smear, a greater act of tarnishing their glory than the extinguishing of all their historical tomes.

yet here he is on his wedding day, watching his emotional bride sweep their own ceremony under layer after layer of snow because she cannot stop crying, she cannot stop smiling even with the cold beating away her matrimonial make up. the council warned of marrying an ice mage because just look at this. she’s got the arctic tundra wrapped around her like a wedding dress, icy drippings of chiffon peaking from underneath the gown. the council stresses the weeks of organizing the color arrangements now blurred by her blizzard, hours poured into the gourmet reception food now knocked into the snow. they bemoan about the darling princess made of platinum politeness and the delicacy of a harpstring previously designated as his queen-to-be. instead he picks this woman, with disaster trailing after her heels and demise caked under her fingernails and snow upset into a storm by her mere presence.

and he is so happy he disobeyed the word of his council at the sight of her mayhem. she wipes the tears crystallized on her cheeks before taking his hand, and he smiles at the mascara marks trailing down her eyes. “they warned you horatio,” she laughs, looking up at the altar; it resembles a miniature glacier more than an altar. “are you sure about this?”

with that smirk on her face, she looks sure enough for the both of them.

“morgana, there’s always warnings when it comes to you,” he laughs right back, and clasps both her hands between his.

son, here’s my last request for you - look away from the blackening eye of the sun when the sky gets dark. no, that’s not the eclipse your pops talked about this past July as we scanned the horizon for shooting stars. there are no more shooting stars. just shield your eyes - and your brothers eyes - away from it. we’ll find you, when the oceans thaw out and the birds no longer fly backwards. we’ll find you. I promise.

The hologram blips out, stark white words LOG 2034-30-8 bleached into the black lines of static before the image collapses back into the video capsule all together. The birds no longer fly altogether. There’s nothing in the sky altogether and my brother argues there is no sky altogether but if so, what is the ceiling keeping us from floating adrift into the abyss sitting beyond our atmosphere?

I told my brother the universe is playing a waiting game with us, and at five that excited him; at fifteen, it becomes a humorless tradition to simply stare into the not-sky and into the empty sockets where the universe’s not-eyes should be. we’re waiting for the new genesis, I tell him, but so is the universe. LOG 2034-30-8 plays in the background, an electronic hitched breath because the hologram can only run so well after a decade: we’ll find you - find you - son - I promise - when the birds no longer fly - no shooting stars - we’ll find you - son -