Dear M.

Dear M,

Four sets of seasons have passed and I’m still where I left you. I wanted to do the leaving and so I packed my things while you were out and left. I decided to stay here because there was really nowhere else for me to go. It also seemed to be the least predictable place to find me and I wanted to keep everyone guessing. It always came natural for me to run and I quickly set my sights on some mountains in the southwest where I’d never been before. It took all my strength to not go there.

I’ve been thinking about quantum physics and multiple universes lately, but the truth is I never took a physics class or read any credible writing on the subject and so I have a very limited understanding. I get that uni means one and multi means many. That was a big step. I understand that matter has some strict rules to follow and that its behavior is governed by outside forces. And, I also understand that math can have a mind of its own and imply answers to questions the mathematician never asked. That’s the part that most interests me.

The famous physicist Brian Greene was on the radio last month and then just yesterday I saw him on a talk-show. He recently wrote another quantum physics book that I’d never be able to get through but still sounds interesting. He thinks there are other us out there and pretty eloquently sold it.

I’ve been imagining that other mes just kept on going in those places where the me writing turned away and redirected. I was wondering if there’s a place way out by M83, millions of light years overhead on some planet that looks just like our's, where we went on together and still are. It doesn’t make any sense, yet then again what does? So many of our daily comings and goings are based on ridiculous assumptions of things impossible in nature. Like, why is your hair red? And what the hell is red anyway?

This isn’t to say I regret anything between us, because I do but that’s beside the point. I would prefer to strike the tenderness from my hand and dispassionately compare our situation to a simple cost benefit analysis or return on investment, which involves formulae and equations that probably added up to less than one. But I don’t understand economics or finances and so I wouldn’t know. I’m more into the natural sciences that touch on things like magnetism and repulsion and chemical weathering and survival.

So let’s just assume that there is in fact another M and she’s way out there by M83, having some discussion with an other me. Maybe she’s making two drinks at the kitchen counter and now she’s turning to bring them and the ice is clicking in the glasses as she moves. What’s different with her? She walks the short distance to a couch and coffee table with a few friends gathered around and hands the other me a drink, cold beads forming on the glass. And as she rejoins the conversation, I wonder, what is she going to say?