Letter from a world that did not end

Dear Noah,

This is my voice today, three years after what people thought would be the Collapse. Funny how we always expect the worst. We can never see the future for what it is— new problems arising with new opportunities, but tomorrow hopefully a little bit better than today.

I actually like being adrift—more than I thought I would. You always knew though. Nomadic before your time. I think walking has changed me. Had it changed you before you met me? Have you found your way through this uncollapsed world?

People ask if I am looking for home. But I think I might just be looking for my selves. And it so happens that they are scattered all over and that—I came to discover—they are inseverable from the places I find them in.

I know that, because of that, I will never be complete in any of the places I reach. Which is why I walk without purpose. I know I will stumble upon people and spaces and they will be my mirrors. Until they are not and I leave in search of new ones.

I travel through them as I travel through my selves.

Do you remember the wall with the painted green plants in front of the sky and the real green plants? I found it today. It is still where we left it, with the green sign and the orange painted lizard. I got here and I looked at it and understood that moments with you coexist with the present of me and that closing my eyes is travelling through time.

I guess this is why I am writing now.

Letter from a world that did not end

I met a stray here, grey like a cloud. It transformed this place where you once existed into a new space—a setting for a new memory. And both of you exist superimposed but not quite. It was like seeing the layers of the multiverse. And you are here and not here. And this wall is ours and not ours.

The light reflects rainbows on my tee-shirt through broken glass and it is not the end of the world. I marked down my journey to here and the dates on the map you gave me seven years ago.

I will be leaving this note tomorrow at dawn and I will walk West, with the hope that you are here somewhere and that our geographies will cross paths again.

Sam