–after “What If? Magik” by Leah Williams and Filipe Andrade
If every action makes a new universe. If every step can
conjur thirteen new worlds. If my body had been too big
to fit in the locker, my muscles just a little bit larger,
my fingers comfortable as fists. If my eyesight hadn’t
started to slip at age six. If I hadn’t wanted to sleep over,
me and his son listening to “Weird” Al and falling asleep
watching Friday the 13th as fireworks burst behind us.
If I’d been born with an aptitude for anything other
than the words I wouldn’t use. How often I was praised
for being quiet. If my hair grew long enough to hide
my thoughts. If I hadn’t doubted if his son really had
the limited variant cover of “The Death of Superman.”
If I didn’t hear him when he said, Good boy, if I didn’t
want so badly to be good. If I could have learned
the stars were symbols and more before I was too old
to decipher them. If my faith hadn’t cracked in the quarry
where they found the brittle body of my drowned friend.
I stripped off my godliness and walked into a limbo
of stripped limbs, open palms on open thighs. If the moon
wasn’t so far away, the morning star hidden behind
artificial light, the fireworks so loud I lost my voice.
If I could have believed once was enough to matter.
But then, what if this is all wrong? If every decision
builds a new universe. If the cat is alive and dead and
chasing a flash of light and not forever stuck in a box.
If I walk alone into a crowded forest and speak the names
of the ants and squirrels, speak the names of the trillium,
the blue jays. Speak my name. His name. If I stop knocking
on wood, stop counting steps between pavement cracks,
stop salting my shoulder and the earth and my wounds.
If I listen when the songbirds speak. If I tell the truth
and see the world won’t be lost in an inferno. If I search
and find the fractal in every letter of the word “trauma.”
If I draw a circle, slide between dimensions and time
and find infinite versions of me, each having survived.
If a spell cannot be buried and neither can a voice. If every
action we take creates a new universe, each word a world,
each sentence a galaxy. If. Unconditionally. Then. What.
Anthony Frame is an exterminator from Toledo, Ohio, where he lives with his wife. He is the author of A Generation of Insomniacs and of three chapbooks, most recently Where Wind Meets Wing (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2018). He is also the editor/publisher of Glass Poetry Press, which publishes the Glass Chapbook Series and Glass: A Journal of Poetry. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poet Lore, Third Coast, Muzzle Magazine, The Shallow Ends, Harpur Palate, and Verse Daily, among others, and in the anthologies Drawn to Marvel: Poems from the Comic Books (Minor Arcana Press, 2014), and Not That Bad: Dispatches form the Rape Culture (HarperCollins, 2018). He has twice been awarded Individual Excellence Grants from the Ohio Arts Council.
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