Somewhere in the throes of time and space,
Is this intricate web spun from the clutches of a black widow's embrace?
Where I sleep in sheets made with silken threads of fate entwined
Where every reality that could ever exist now lights the path before my eyes
Does every fire I've put out start another?
Do I ever inherit the height of my brother or the eyes of my mother?
Is there a string of what could have beens -
Landing on alternatives like the bottles we used to spin
One where I let the conversation run dry and the coffee go cold
Where the illusion of me crumbles, selling my cheap silver as pure gold
Perhaps a version where this isolated island has a more accessible bridge
A story etched in that passenger seat, the rider long gone on a horse named courage
A telephone line that never grew cold from my icy snowstorm of frost
Where the lines I've drawn in the dirt remained untouched and uncrossed
A world that breathes the same way we meet in my dreams,
Or one where the ghosts of my nightmares slip silently through the gleam
Is there ever one where the northern wall stands just a bit shorter?
Where it's heads instead of tails when they flip that forsaken quarter
A life where you left the party before I ever even got there
Or one where I was offered the desires that torment my prayers
Is there ever a place where my lion's pride didn't eclipse an apology?
A reality where my brain doesn't claw for symbology
When that singular gaze was met, but instead I allowed it to linger -
A galaxy where that driver wasn't as much of a drinker
Somewhere out there, a planet certainly exists,
Where the woes of war don't sound like translated gibberish
Perhaps there's one where I learned to speak the same language
Another where my dishonorable discharge didn't cost the price of your anguish
I'd bet there's even one where Pandora fails to open her box -
A life where 800 miles remained only 8 blocks
A place where the months never came and went as I let the battle rage for ages,
Where the notes of these stories aren't continuously being written, fighting for space on the pages
Or maybe in the last of that summer sun, those birds had simply flown east
Leaving what was dead declared formally deceased
A brighter moon full of hope, a more vicious and violent sea -
An unrecognizable version rewritten a thousand times of me
What face would then look back in a mirror's reflection?
A narrative where every unconditional exception was desired rejection
Really and truly, do other worlds await?
That walk this trapeze line of a different pre-determined fate
Are they occurring as we sleep -
Are they laughing as we weep?
Is there one for every fantasy I've ever longed for,
And ones for every failure I've never had to endure?
Is it only small differences like missing the bus,
Or getting caught on my poker hand full of sly bluffs?
Or are there lives where these meteors never crashed into my sphere -
Where the gardens of my imagination aren't always better than down here
All these planes land on the runway replaced by another taking flight -
While you sit in the window seat to meet the soul of another life
Perhaps whispers once shared were rather left unsaid,
What became my favorite song was instead unheard, a series of lyrics now unread
Hear me out, just truly think, what if the stars had simply turned their face?
And moonlit a soul that wasn't mine but instead ones in another time, another place
Where the hand that stuck out as I fell mid-air -
Never wrapped around me because I was never there
Maybe all of these lives drift, alive on the Black Pearl
Each unique plot living out its' fate, these surprise endings hauntingly unfurled
I yearn to understand how each of my characters will find their end -
For these things I will always wonder, this killing silence my only friend
I'd plea to the cosmos, but they never return my call -
Maybe they're confused by who I am and where I've lost my drawl
I stand on this island, the title my birthday gift, land I've always owned -
Among the million screens a re-run could show, this theatre is mine alone
A thousand choices - decisions made, secrets whispered, moments lost
These threads of elsewhere, echoes of the unknown- life's delicate cost