These Pictures of You

Be warned. I have no intention of making sense.

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Let’s jam.

Everyone thinks of the multiverse, always have. What could have been, what might have been, what never was, is. Possibilities feel just as tangible as a cheap picture frame. Maybe that’s all memory is: a possibility trying to actualize itself. And maybe love is latent possibility, too.

There’s the picture of the first woman I ever fell in love with. An artist bright as the universe, kind as a newborn star. When she laughed, troubles dissolved. When she kissed, spirit revealed itself and both our hearts slowed down. The one important thing I never knew about her till after we broke up was how much she enjoyed my smile when she sang. She told me when he had our parting dinner. The picture I see that hasn’t yet existed for me is of her at her piano. It’s autumn. Her small apartment is warm. The last bits of steam rise from two unattended mugs. I don’t know the song she’s singing, it’s a gospel. She sings it softly as if she has all the time in the world. I’m smiling from eyes to lip tips but I’m not aware of it.

I am not aware.

Travel back to high school and the most popular girl in sophomore class. Everyone said she’d go on to become a model. Everyone assumed she came from a family of means. I’d grown up with her since sixth grade. We weren’t quite friends, but we talked. I was the only boy in our circle not wondering what she looked like without pants. In sophomore typing class, she’d have my room folder and the day’s assignment at my desk before I got there. I noticed people looking at this daily ritual, and the looking made my quiet heart beat weird. I heard people whispering, and I didn’t care, not till I fully parsed the actual words detailing what I must have been doing to her to have her be so nice to me. It took a couple weeks of her pretending not to hear to lead me to ask her to stop. I’ve rarely seen a simple request crush so much. Her face, which smiled for me, came to a full stop. Her posture died next, followed by whatever light she held in her head for the two of us potentially to share.

In the picture we’ve been friends through college, through her career in anthropology and me wandering the world, through doubts, triumphs, loves and fears. Her eyes are kind even when she’s tired. I wonder does she ever get to truly rest?

Before that, after that, others. Branching, twisting, orbiting, gravity always too slight to properly seize. Whirling astral bodies.I went through life quietly, ever quietly, the perpetually-

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Sneeze.

The one who offered a tissue without being asked is a painting, a fresco if you please. Not a photo but hues on canvas that change with the rain, the sun, the wind, the snow. Alter with nature rather than struggle against. I loved her for her, she loved me for me.

We married in a small ceremony.

Divorced the same way.

Between those two markers: nights enjoying summer breezes; pancake breakfasts followed by videogame marathons; hands reaching out unconsciously for one another during lulls in stupid TV; moonlight from bed; storms from the backyard; a shoulder, mine or hers, for a head; backs scratched; tasks shared; fears faced; and death after death after death.

The multiverse is a river. You drink from rivers, get cooled by em, eat fish from em, cross em.

I see her as she was during a quiet moment on our honeymoon to Toronto. We’d stopped for a brief ride on a tour ship. I barely recall the sights. I clearly recall her sitting atop a squat metal post afterward, turquoise sweater, black jeans, sun trying to see past her sunglasses as she took in a deep breath, stepped out of time, and stared at forever’s horizon.

I took a picture. It’s the only picture I have that exists throughout all universes. A fixed moment free of illusions. That kind of clarity doesn’t pop in and out every day. I knew that I loved her, she loved me, and we always would no matter how realities branched out.

So we do. Divorce didn’t stop that. Divorce just set us wandering our tours of life more separately, that’s all. Gave us the ability to step in and out of each other’s universes rather than live in them.

Maybe that ability is all folks need in order to travel these huge voids. A visit now and then between photographing. What does this have to do with time spent being you? Does it have anything to do with writing, creativity, or genre-hopping? Probably a little bit of nothing, a whole lot of everything. Life picks a trope, a structure, and attempts to create a static universe around those static ideas, whereas the spaces between words (and memories) are dappled rivers. Unending. Dip, slip, and cross.

But this ain’t about knowledge, is it? This is for testing  personal field resonance. Can lead to being willing to create again. A moment, a relationship, some art or truth. Everyone’s universe is bigger, wider, and brighter than the stars. If they exist in their own specific point of memory, take solace in the fact that so do you; likely a billion and one of you in their view. I told you this wouldn’t make sense, but let’s not pretend there’s a universe where understanding is always a matter of anybody knowing all the right words.