LAWET

Kaustav Ghosh

Myself in another timeline—
or maybe in the hidden fold
of this endless multiverse,
where every choice we never made
still breathes somewhere.

Do I get you there?
Or had I to die
to love you again?

Perhaps in that world
I didn’t let you go.
Perhaps I found you
before the universe taught us
the cruel mathematics of losing.

Maybe there,
your hand still fits into mine
like it remembers
what my fingers have forgotten.

Maybe we meet
in a railway station at dusk,
two strangers carrying
the same unfinished dream—
and somehow,
without knowing why,
we smile.

You ask me,
“Have we met before?”

And I say,
“Not in this lifetime.”

Because perhaps
love is not something
we begin.

Perhaps it is something
we continue.

Across cities.
Across centuries.
Across bodies that perish
and stars that collapse.

Maybe somewhere
another version of me
is already waiting for you—
older, younger,
braver,
less afraid of losing you.

And somewhere
another version of you
is looking at the same moon
with the strange ache
of remembering a face
she has never seen.

So if I don’t find you here,
don’t call it an ending.

Call it a coordinate
the universe misplaced.

Call it a story
that chose another timeline.

And if death is merely
the door between two chapters,
then perhaps—

when I close my eyes
for the last time here,

I will open them somewhere else,

look at you,

and finally remember

why my soul
had been searching
for you

all along.