Every Quantum Leap Through Every Sliding Doors

The trouble with having a hyperactive imagination is the persistence of hope.

That in the face of insurmountable odds, there is that tiny, iota of quantum possibility that there was a sliding door somewhere through the great offices of fate, and there was a left turn, or a right one, and stars aligned differently, and butterflies fluttered by causing ripples of alternate details and...

Jazz music. Spilled beer. Flyers for an open mic next week, poster of this week's. We are barely 20's, and I am in love with you in ways I can't be, shouldn't be, and...

A ripple, a rip through the fabric, a run through lady luck's whorish stockings, and

Tuesday afternoon, and you enter the class for the first time, and this isn't the last time I'll insist on getting your number, and...

One day, in Guatemala, an earthquake opened the ground beneath Guillermo Perez's house, and swallowed his dog. And...

The MRT station is crowded, and I'm scared of getting pushed in front of the oncoming train. You are holding someone else's hand. Your free hand lightly brushes against my crotch, and I'm not sure if you smiled. And...

Someone threw an empty can from a moving car. It rolled down the road, and Peter failed to see it on his bike.

Jazz music. Spilled beer. Flyers for next, next week's open mic, poster for the one this Friday. "Hey, why don't you come?" I tell you. "I'm not sure," you say. "I'm reading," I say. "You never write about me," you tease. If you only  knew that every world I created with every word I've written I made just to contain your beauty for eternity. If you only knew that this world itself was created just for that purpose. If you only knew the many millions of possibilities imagined for you, for me, for us. "I might," I say, taking a swig from the beer I'm holding.

"The trouble with hope," I told you on a lazy afternoon. "Is that it makes you imagine fantasies against the persistence of reality."

"Is this real, then?" you cared to ask. "What is real?"

"This," I told you. "Is fiction. We are quantum possibilities that never happened, but could have had. You are not here with me, we never were together. This isn't my hand holding yours. We, my dear, are neurons firing at each other, chemicals reacting inside someone's brain, constructed from air."

"Whose brain?"

I smiled at you. "The one with nothing to lose, and everything to gain."

"How do you know that?"

"Because the one with everything to lose can't possibly imagine anything better."