Let’s talk about love and parallel dimensions.

I’ve had a theory for several years that it is far easier than one supposes to slip between alternate worlds, through the membrane of reality between eyeblinks. It happens all the time and most people rarely notice because the worlds we flip between are ever-so nearly identical. Here there’s a red house and there it’s blue. Here my keys are on the table, but there they are on the hook. Has that McDonalds always been there? Did this shirt always have a black stripe? We travel when we sleep and things are almost the same when we open our eyes.

Almost the same.

You find yourself talking to a friend, but things seem strange. They know you from Universe 247B, but you are remembering Universe 8-Jacket-907. Are your memories congruent? What’s the margin of error? In Plato’s Cave are we remotely seeing the same shadows?

I like this theory a lot. Maybe it’s because my memory is  a constantly rumbling Etch-a-Sketch, or maybe it’s because I lose things all the time, or maybe it’s

because I feel a distance between me and most humans. Some souls are a little less anchored than others, more easily sent adrift through the worlds.

I also fear this theory a lot. One day I might slip too far. Open my eyes in a dimension where no one knows me, or a place where every ill decision waits to wreak itself upon my brow. Most people slip when they sleep, but some days every blink shows me someplace different. Every car ride, every corner turn, every open door a new dimension. I try to hold on, to navigate, to touch stone and remember. The wind keeps blowing, ceaseless and patient.

But then I see my Beloved.

Somedays I slip far away, even from her, but then we blink together. We blink together and I am home. And when we sleep we slip together and wake up someplace new, someplace stranger — but together. We blink together and we are home.

There are more worlds than this and we dance through them unknowing. A forever carousel of worlds and souls and change and wind. A single life can get lost so easily, spun out of the gyre into worlds dark and forlorn. It is only the gravity of love, the shining thread in the dark that binds and must not break. There are those who believe it immortal and inviolate, but I am too full of shadow to agree. It burns all the brighter for its fragility, it holds all the stronger for how easy it is to shatter.

Thank you for knitting the cord with me, thank you for travelling so far with me. Across a billion worlds I prayed to find you. May the shortest distance between two points always be our thread, hand in hand we travel and I always wake up home.

I love you.

Blink with me and we are home.