My Block Universe Theory
Somewhere, in a parallel universe,
It’s still just you and me.
Somewhere, we’re still neighbours,
riding our horses through the ghost gums.
Zigzagging through constellations like dried out riverbeds
at the back of your farm.
Your smell is still equal parts apple and saddle leather.
Your half-smile,
still the colour of Mars; dirt-flecked and dry.
Somewhere, we meet again for the first time
at the shared barb-wire fence on the property line.
Fingertips touching through damp dog fur.
My kelpie has eaten your grandfather’s fox bait
and lies marble-eyed and stiff in the dew.
“I’m so sorry,” you say.
And as we bury him under the camellias
for the second time,
I know how much you really mean it.
Somewhere, I’m still a little girl.
Young enough to play with dolls,
old enough to be ashamed.
Your voice, freshly broken, still rests at the quivering kind of depth
that makes your cheeks flush.
Your dad left you in a lightning storm— so you cut yourself shaving.
Too proud to ask for help.
Somewhere, despite our nerves,
we lug saddlebags heavy with hope for adventure
beyond the back 40.
Red-bellied black snakes stalk us
through breaks in the bracken.
And our pinkie fingers find each other
as the sun sets.
Somewhere, in another dimension,
we still live on the outskirts of nowhere.
Our streets are soft in the winter with mud and frost,
our currency— unending land and horses
and not much else.
You still sleep in your caravan going to nowhere.
Its wheels flat and sunken,
its windows shattered and fixed.
We lie under blankets, your arm around my shoulder,
and carve our names into the bed frame
again, and again and again and again.
That way, we’ll never forget.
Somewhere, we’re still best friends
running in the dark to catch the blood moon in a butterfly net,
tripping over Blundstones,
hiding from your grandparents.
Cicadas and a celestial forcefield hum between us.
Fingers conducting electrical currents,
holding hands.
Somewhere,
your mum never came to take you back to the suburbs.
You never had to walk an eternity
of identical, manicured streets—
so alien to the ones we’d known.
I never had to wish I could tell you—
I kept your horse safe,
made your caravan bed fresh every morning.
Willing you to come home.
“I’m so sorry
“I’m so sorry
“I’m so sorry,” is all I remember you saying now.
But deep down, I know it doesn’t matter.
Deep down, I know we never really lost each other in the suburban sprawl.
Not really.
Because, somewhere in a parallel universe,
we’re kids again.
Riding our horses on Saturn rings
in indigo skies,
with nothing but Andromeda before us
And the world at our feet.
Somewhere, I know, we are still together,
in the outline of a cloud
Just you and me,
Living our alternate ending.
