the version of me you never met

“in another world, i learned how to stay before i learned how to run. maybe that’s where you found me — not on this side of time, but in the one where i didn’t flinch every time someone tried to love me. there’s a version of me who didn’t turn pain into poetry, who didn’t keep counting the ways people leave. he doesn’t scroll through old messages just to feel something familiar. he doesn’t build walls and call them homes. that version of me still laughs without thinking, still sleeps through the night. he knows how to say i’m okay and mean it. he still texts first. he still believes that some things last. sometimes i think you were meant for him — the softer me, the unbroken one, the boy who didn’t confuse silence for peace. maybe in another universe we got it right. we stayed. we grew old in the small ways — learning each other’s coffee orders, arguing about nothing, forgiving faster. we became ordinary, and that was the miracle. but here, in this version, i only meet you in dreams that end too soon. i wake up reaching for a name that no longer belongs to me. and i wonder — if you ever feel it too, that quiet tug in the chest, like déjà vu wearing perfume. like love remembering itself. there are nights i whisper to the ceiling, asking the stars how many versions of me have to lose you before one of us gets it right. sometimes i like to think that in some small corner of the multiverse, you’re sitting beside me right now — our hands brushing, our laughter spilling into the space between seconds. and maybe that version of me doesn’t need to write this poem, because you never left, and he never learned what heartbreak tastes like. but i did. and maybe that’s the point. maybe i had to lose you here so another me could keep you there. so if you ever feel a warmth for no reason, or a sudden ache that doesn’t belong — it’s just me, from this version, still loving you across universes you’ll never see.”