Within dead branches

Treading familiar ground

Your absence reverberates around me, amplified by a thousand tiny memories. When I started this journey, I wasn’t sure what to expect. The novelty of the first few branches was exhilarating. Discovering that a young actor who had OD’d outside a Hollywood nightclub was still alive and making films into his fifties gave me hope. But in every branch I visit, there are no signs of you.

I can’t find you at the used-book store where we spent our Saturday afternoons browsing and sharing titles with each other. I search in vain for you at the cafe down the block from our apartment, where we would sit and talk about our future together. We thought we had so much time ahead of us.

At the rescue shelter where you volunteered on weekends, I get up the nerve to ask about you, but they have never heard of you. I hang out at various incarnations of our favourite karaoke bar across several branches, nursing a drink and hoping that you will walk through the door with your friends or maybe even with a variant of me. Anytime someone sings our song, it’s all I can do to keep it together. Most of the time I want to cry — lie down and give up — but then something unexpected happens. I get angry. So angry I don’t recognize myself. I have to fight the urge to rip the microphone away from the person singing. I imagine myself screaming that no one should ever be allowed to sing that song in your absence. It scares me. I stop checking the karaoke bar after that.

In one branch, I’m sure I spot you on a subway platform about to board a train. Are you going to work? To visit a friend? A lover? I call your name, but the doors close, and the train pulls away. Your doppelgänger stares out the window directly at me and, although they look like you, I can tell immediately it’s not you. There’s no connection. They don’t have your spark, your vitality. I start to wonder if maybe that is it. The reason you burned so brightly in our timeline. Was it the only one in which you existed?

Of course, I stalked myself in one of the first branches I visited. I naively thought that following me would lead to you. I was shocked to discover that version of me was with someone else. I wanted to confront the traitor, ask if I even knew you. But I was too afraid to confront myself. Worried that I might be OK without you. Happy even, without ever having known you. Impossible. That’s not me. Could never be me. You meant — no, you mean everything to me.

I tune the device to find another branch of our timeline and hit the button like a gambler at a slot machine, knowing the odds are against me, but utterly convinced the next one will be the one that pays off. I make the rounds, looking for you at our favourite haunts. I take notes of what’s different in this timeline. Hoping to discern some pattern, some clue to point me in the right direction. How long have I been at this? Weeks? Months?

Has anyone even noticed my absence in the way I have noticed yours? I try to tell myself that I only want to know you are all right — that you exist somewhere across the branches of time, happy and alive. But I know in my heart that my reasons are more selfish than that. That I want to feel your embrace again, hear you laugh at one of my awful puns, witness your enthusiasm for all that is good in the world.