i dreamt the other night of a different timeline, one where my youngest was still little and we were still in idaho. i was teaching my first semester as a professor. things hadn’t happened (yet) like covid or the dissolution of my career and belief in college education. you came to see me and we were finally in each other’s arms again.

i don’t remember much. it was mostly flashes of images built off memories and never agains. but you let me kiss your stomach like i used to and it was soft, giving, and forgiving…just like it was once. you kissed me and i tasted a galaxy. just as i remember.

i woke up to my pulse racing and in an almost panic. a stress dream but with something beautiful? that’s new.

eclipse season. Aries in the north node. the flip of the last eclipse in Libra that took place in October where I was so determined you never loved me. The other side of the coin.

I remembered when we were still kind of friends, you had lost weight through dieting and exercise. I recalled a picture of yourself you had up when your instagram was public. You showed off a toned bare chest and stomach. I didn’t recognize you in that photograph and it haunted me.

The old you was who visited me in my dream. He’s the one i knew in another past as well as this one. I cannot dream the you of now or in this timeline, you now is a stranger.

i once told you after we broke up that it was okay because we were still together in another universe. i said this before all the multiverse stories became a thing in our pop cultural consciousness. but every single time i see a movie or show about timelines and the multiverse, i wonder if you remember i said that to you. i wonder if there’s a me somewhere who would do what Wanda did just to experience the life she dreamt and wanted.

there’s never any answers so i calmed my pulse down because my heart can’t take stress for much longer. it hasn’t figured out how to stay alive in this timeline so far away from the universe where it was supposed to live.