Written to One of My Selves in an Alternate Universe
You may never read between these lines
or even along these lines,
but would that words were wormholes.
I can’t—can you?—break through
the air sacs and star bags we live in,
the bubbles that may burst or collapse
and simply no longer are, thus never were.
Then what does it matter or antimatter?
When one mirror shatters into stardust,
do we both die?
I sense from the crackle of my hair
and the scrambled signals of my inner ear
that like me you are staring up
to the membrane border of your world,
poking your finger in the thick sky
to make a wave or hole to heaven.
So my words are yours.
Perhaps, then, we shine in the same
starlight tonight, the same
electric air that leaks through
on the string theory tying us together.
I dream tonight that our voices
cross the line, that our fingertips
touch from opposite sides of the skywall,
and upon the stars we get our wish
and hear our echoes answer.
—Robert S. King. First published in Firefly