JP LEGARTE
Hypothetical
In this hypothetical universe, glass
does not compose my body. I do not shatter
as I wade through violent currents rushing toward
sculpted oceans. Instead, I am like these waters,
bleeding out progression in waves. Perpetual
movement here cascades effortlessly, and rest lies
as a forgotten dream that has collapsed
under once fallen skies.
In this separate world, she stays. Showers
of abandoned petals never pour down. The strangers
do not pierce the coloration of our unfolding stories.
With curious innocence and her auburn hair as a waterfall
over the stone edge of my shoulder blade, she asks
if we would be together in other universes
if their existences were infinity. I tell her
what cannot be measured can sometimes be
the most beautiful answers left unsaid. She lavishes
unspoken affections in the collision
of our undivided lips, the unraveling stillness
that penetrates the complexity of liquid shadows
under the alluvion of purple moonlight. Never did
the present embrace us more than in that midnight blossom.
In this altered reality,
I am someone else.
JP Legarte is a Pilipino-American junior at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign working toward a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing and an English minor. He desires to provide spaces through his poetry where others can process their own emotions, ponderings, and anything else within life itself. His poems have been previously published or are forthcoming in Poetry Undressed, Behind the Vision, Words & Whispers, Ice Lolly Review, and The Global Youth Review among other journals and magazines. You can find him on Instagram at @jpl091 and @unspokenentropy.