If I had your power, Wanda,
To meet another version of me,
In an obscure corner of a universe,
I wonder....
Would she be perfect, better than I've ever known?
Would she be a genius, with every idea her own?
Would she have it all together, so she'd never break,
Would she know how exactly not to make a mistake?
I hope her world thrives eternally, on her joy,
I hope nothing in her life can ever be destroyed,
I wish her peace, and the strength to find her way,
When the sun hides, the moon is dark, and her heart is led astray.

I'm sure the multiverse is existing
I'm sure that I got you there
because I miss you every single day
and that feeling links to the other me.
I'm sure this yearning means that we're close in that other world.

Some say we all live in a “Multiverse” –
A myriad of universes
All parallel to one another
Invisible to us
Apart from our own universe
Wondrous as it is.

So in some other universe there is
Another version of yourself,
Where you turned right at some junction
Instead of left
And had a serious accident
Instead of winning the lottery.
Or nothing much happened
Or Everything.

Even my own fertile imagination
Is floored
By the endless possibilities here.
My mind is truly boggled
Fit to explode.

For every tiny insect in our universe
Might fly right
Or left
Or not at all
To thus create another universe.

I could write an epic poem on this.
To think that somewhere out there
I may be Immortal, or a King, or Rock Star
Or even about to be Executed
If not already dead.
And you might be these things too.

Versions of ourselves might live in universes
That echo those of fiction
In worlds such as Narnia, Middle Earth
And that of Star Trek, Star Wars
And Stargate SG One
To name but a few.

Oh to have a TV Remote
Like the fictional “Sliders”
To take us from this realm
To any other of our choice.
Or a “Uniscape”:
A machine like a Tardis
Which can take us to any place
Or time
Or universe
Or Other Multiverse???

My head is aching now.
My mind explodes
Like The Universe
And The Multiverse
Or Multiverse of Multiverses.
So I’d better stop
Before this becomes an epic
And my head explodes.

But, meanwhile, in another universe
I didn’t stop!!!

Paul Butters

© PB 18\9\2023.

please, look at me.
look at me in every way that love feels,
then peer into me as if you are meeting
a candle light to blow its heat.
     i promise i won't speak unless you need me to,
so look at me in every possible way
if it helps you see me better.

deep in your gaze,
mesh me in every memory that makes you cry
     for i am a home for dark things too.
your every spill cannot flood
the vast space of my nothingness.
     i have all the room in the world
     to take in every version of you.