Parallel Universes

HANNAH V WARREN

Level 1: The Universe, Extended

thirty-two teeth in my world here or my world there the same tide-pull the same stretch marks on my hips the same hands in my hair

is it so hard to think that I could be different that I could be an astrophysicist or a mother or the woman on the bus with three grocery bags of mangoes that something between here and there would blip no bangs no rented house with a green door no memories of my mother’s switchblade grass Level 2: Inflated Cosmic

somewhere, I’m a femme fatale

wide-eyed and dangerous with three knives in my coat I’m not held down by gravity or the steely reserve of my motion sickness

I’m stone-cold sober without a daughter and a slanted view of the world without a broken collarbone and a potted bonsai tree

my thighs are made of metal

Level 3: The Many Worlds of Quantum Physics

I’m real—skin and bones—but I don’t know it and neither does my mother because she was born five-hundred times because she was never born

I’m living in Budapest I’m living in Colorado I’m living on a mountain in France and I care for nothing but a garden

I’m living with my daughter and we speak a language I don’t recognize

I’m the woman who asked you for change this morning or the woman who let the door hit your heel or the woman who sliced the bus driver’s throat Level 4: Ultimate Ensemble

all at once

I have more teeth than can fit in my mouth I have eight eyes and pincers that can snap bone I have forty countries in my palm

my age flows in reverse and I disappear before I know I’m anywhere

my mother disappears before she’s even born my radiation leaves black holes in another world’s maps