Here’s what I understand, that human beings are approximately
75% water, and some of us are writing first drafts of our life stories,
but others of us are finishing up our final thesis.
Inserting a finger into the cool skin of a pond leads to a ripple effect,
just as the consequences of me touching my history teacher
lightly on the back of a neck with the heel of my palm leads to profound
variations in the way my life story will turn out-
everything will be altered. It’s like that story you read when you were
in middle school, the one where the man goes back in time
in his rickety old machine and tries to save the woman he loves
from falling off her seventh-story balcony, but ends up prolonging
the lifespan of the dinosaurs by fifty million years instead.
And as Newton said so eloquently, for every action
there is an equal but opposite reaction:
late at night I look out the window and see the city flickering,
and my reflection raises its hand to touch the glass,
so I raise my own hand to meet it, thereby connecting myself
to yes, myself with five fingertips, and some woman
on the other side of this hotel is doing the same thing.
Therefore, ours souls exchange positions and our life stories
are reversed. Now I love the man she loved, and now
she is the one who will spend countless hours of each day
searching for lifelines in the skin of her wrist
where so many have already been ruptured like a stick
diverting a current’s flow to the other side of the river.