To a Different Me

                Dear Self from another timeline,

Who are you?

Do you wonder about me,

As much as I wonder about you?

You know the answer to one of my frequent questions:

If I stayed all those years ago.

I’ll never know the answer,

But you’re living it.

More than a letter away,

Not on this earth,

I’m the reason you aren’t.

But I still wonder,

Not every day,

But more than I’d like.

 

I know you are a different person.

We’ve had different experiences.

I don’t know who you are,

What you’re like,

How different we are,

But we are different.

And that’s a certainty.

Are you friends with who I drifted from?

Did you take the classes I thought I would?

Take the trip I thought I’d take?

 

How different are our goals?

How changed are we as people?

Do you ever think of the time before we split?

Does it ever surprise you how much you’ve changed?

Do you struggle with the same questions I do?

Do you believe in what I do?

Are you happier?

Would I be happy in your life?

Would you be surprised by mine?

I can’t predict everything that’s happened to you.

But somehow, they have created you,

And prevented you from being me.

 

I can’t figure what you’ve been through.

I doubt I’ll ever know.

How can I know?

When you won’t receive this letter,

When I won’t ever meet you,

When you don’t exist in this realm,

And I’m proof of that.

You can’t exist with me.

I can’t exist with you.

Yet I have so many questions,

You’ll never get to answer.

You’re one decision away,

But I chose the one that made me.

And you were gone before you began.

 

So, I send a belated goodbye,

A belated questioning,

And a record of my wonderings

 

From the self you’ll never meet

This poem is about: 
Me
Guide that inspired this poem: 

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