989 words

You smile when you see her across the street again.

She laughs when you ask her the way to the station. It is right there behind her, South Entrance in huge letters, people bustling in and out of the oversized doorway.

She asks where you are from—don't they have trains there—and you smile and shrug. A version of you exists in almost every branch of reality, but part of you, the part that hurts, that knows how she holds your heart, has only just arrived in this world.

She apologises, stumbling over the words. She does not usually tease people, she says. She touches your arm, like she has at so many of your beginnings.

Next time, you try not to ask her the way to the station, but she sees you hesitating and she stops. Her deep green eyes, the same as those in your aching dreams, hold you in place until you have to speak.

The time after, you ask her for directions like you have before, and when she teases you, you invite her for a coffee. You rush the words, and she laughs.

When everything has played out, when your hope has died and you are back at the South Entrance and back at the beginning of it all again, you ask her for directions once more. Then you make yourself leave, trying to keep that brief exchange as something sweet and sharp and untainted. Five minutes later you stumble into her as you wander almost blindly through the station. You smile because she is almost her, and you are always you. She introduces herself.

The next time, you stare at her on the street, trying to stop yourself. The thought of standing there and watching her go hurts just as much as all the other times you’ve lost her. You wish you could walk away. You cannot.

A dozen times. A hundred times. There is pain in the end, always pain and loss and the shattering of your brittle hope, and yet you keep returning.

And you smile when you see her across the street again.

#

"Tell me the deepest truth of you," she says one night as you lay in bed.

There is only one that needs telling, and you can't. It becomes a splinter wedged between you. It will fester. It always does.

Or you tell her you have travelled farther than anyone to find her. She nods slowly, her green eyes searching your face.

Or you tell her the full truth and she becomes angry.

"I'm trying to be serious," she says, and she leaves, pulling on her clothes roughly. Behind her anger is fear. The truth is worse than your silence. Maybe her leaving in anger is better than what happens if she stays. Maybe this is the best you can get. And yet…

You try again. And again. There should be one branch that goes on. You just need to find it.

You smile when you see her across the street again.

#

"Don't go to work today," you say. You are not completely sure if this is the day that is the end of her, because the ways have fragmented and branched so much. She asks why, and you cannot find the words—not this time. She goes, and you hope the sum of all your silences and hesitations have made something different, at least this once.

You are wrong.

One time, and then many times, you go on a trip together. A holiday, which is really just running.

It makes no difference.

Another time you ask her to stay home and she confronts you. You break down and tell her she is not who she is, and you are not who you are. She asks if you are serious. If you came back. Her words. This version of her has picked up on so many small things, watched you with those deep green eyes, connected comments and gestures and thoughtless wonderings. You cannot explain. Sideways, not back. Branches, not a line. Fluctuations in a fabric beyond your own understanding, a thousand worlds that branch and branch with possibilities and yet always converge.

You tell her you have broken all the rules. Soon they will stop you because you cannot stop yourself. She leaves to think, to have space, to get away from you and your strangeness. You are almost sure today is the day and she will not return.

You are correct.

Another time, another branching, you do not ask her to stay, as you have so often. You kiss her and tell her you love her. It is close enough to true, because you are always the same, and she is almost the same, and the pain is always the pain. You watch her go, and try to leave it all be.

You cannot.

You smile when you see her across the street again.

#

Eventually they come for you. You have broken the rules so many times. You have misused what you were given. Explored too many ways, delved too deeply, held on too long. This is not healthy, they say. They need to stop you, they say, and you weep, because the world, your world, is the branching of things where your heart is forever broken.

Once more, you say. You plead. No, it will not fix you, but it may help. They debate. They are not without pity. And jumping across the branches of reality is supposed to be for saying goodbye, after all.

You see her across the street again.

You hold yourself still and you watch as she walks away, and it hurts like all of those losses, all of those times she was gone no matter how you tried. But you see this one last version of her, and you hope for something different.

That without you, her branch, this branch, will be something more for her.

And you try to smile.

© 2026 Matt Tighe