In this world

“There is another world, and it is in this one.” ~ Paul Eluard

Someone is always saying things
like Look at that splotchy blue-

green marble spinning in space—
What if we’re only a simulation

on someone else’s screen? There, today,
is your double sitting in a folding chair

on the sand flats, reading a book or taking
a nap in the sun? When the sand magically

reassembles into an office building, who
walks purposefully into the elevator,

lightly touching a folder of announcements
she’ll make from the head of the table

in the meeting room on the top floor?
At the end of the day, when a tremor

begins from somewhere deep in the planet’s
core, the people at bus and train stations

break into a run. Others rush out
of the corner grocery store carrying

trays of eggs, rotisserie chickens,
forgetting to pay. Whose phone is loudly

ringing in a coat pocket with urgent
news about someone who’s just gone into

labor, someone who jumped off a bridge;
someone who stopped breathing, just

like that? It could be you or it could be
your double, hunched over a figure

prone on the floor: pumping with two
hands, praying and breathing into a mouth.

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