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I don’t think about the Multiverse theory very often.
Too much else to do, to be honest.
Work. Laundry. Cooking. Netflix.
My day fills up too quickly for philosophizing.

But this morning on my way to work,
a kid ran out in front of my car
I saw him out of the corner of my eye.
My heart skipped a few beats
as I slammed on the brake pedal.
The kid never even realized...
he almost died in the middle of the street.

I thought about the multiverse.
Somewhere there is another universe
where some other me hit him.

If there is a universe for every possibility,
is there a universe where all the bad things happened?
Every near miss was a direct hit?

The me who hit the kid
didn’t catch the dish I dropped this morning
before it shattered on the kitchen floor,
forgot to turn off the burner last night
after my evening chamomile tea,
and sat next to my mom in the ICU
the day she didn’t miraculously pull through.



Jenny Thompson is an IT professional by day and an avid reader the rest of the time. This poem is her first published piece. You can reach her on Twitter: @JennyRThompson.
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20 Mar 2023

Strange Horizons will be open to fiction submissions on April 26th, 2023, at 9 a.m. UTC! To keep our response times manageable and submission windows more frequent, there will be a 1,000-story cap on submissions.
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