A/N: Written for the Diversity Writing Challenge, b2 – over 30 lines poem.
tryst with a timeline
Possibilities exist, only because
it's impossible to prove they don't.
Worlds aren't defined by integers.
Worlds aren't defined by zeroes and ones.
Worlds aren't defined by a set of rules someone
scrawled into an 8mm ruled exercise book.
Worlds aren't made by wishes, either.
Worlds aren't made by dreams.
Worlds aren't made up by stories
one types up in between.
They exist. Far too many
with far too many subtleties
to count.
No two child is born the same.
No two world is born the same.
It's a game of lottery, a game of chance
and there's a random algorithm
picking her numbers every time.
She dishes out a few extra coins
with no guarantee she'll get them back
when the payout comes,
no guarantee she'll get a payout at all
and she rarely does, like all good gambling games
with large payouts on the screen
and the one who beats astronomical odds -
that's never her.
It's a joke, anyway,
beating the odds: they're not a game
of memory, where if you flip enough cards
you can clear what's left behind.
It's a game of flip the coin instead
when you're on a row of tails, and still,
there's no guarantee you'll flip a head
next time: you only think you must
because the outcome can't always be the same
in a game of chance - but that's wrong.
Zero is in the realm of probability. Never,
and always is too.
She's getting tired of flipping coins.
She has to flip them anyway.
Keep on flipping.
There's no point staying in a world
filled with zeroes.
If there's ever a one in those,
she turns it into zero too.
How unfair, that you can't turn
zeroes to ones, too.
Zeroes and ones. Tails and heads.
She needs a world with all ones
where the only zero is the villain
she verses, but never knows.
One, one, one... There's never enough
of them and the ones that are there
are quickly rounded off and curved.
Zeros and ones. Tails and heads.
She needs a row of ones
and gets a row of zeroes instead.
Probabilities exist.
Possibilities exist.
She knows they're out there
only because she knows
they can't be not.
She can only keep flipping coins,
keep trying worlds,
and hope she stumbles on the one
where a line of ones is drawn.
Each one's a different tale
and it's too much to calculate,
too much to plan.
Whole worlds were never able
to be planned.
Even with her narrow sights:
her life, and her friends -
was that too much to ask?
Apparently so.
She doesn't find a carbon copy world
but the chances of that
exist as well, just the same
as finding her world with all the ones
and finding a world of nothingness.
Lucky she has the means to turn back
and find another world.
Most don't get the chance.
Most don't die at ten, either,
but even those who do don't get
this chance. It's a chance, a possibility
that no-one can prove it does exists
and no-one can prove it doesn't
but is it luck, to chase a tree
that may be fruitless, or may
bear fruit that odds that the bricks
underfoot will never lead her too?
She keeps going anyway
because she can despair or believe
and she chooses to believe.