Suppose the numbers on your alarm clock
flashed backwards at 4:23 am. You’d feel the earth
yield to your bed—your lungs, to the cabin pressure.
A flickering reflection of time would play off
your body, gleaming with white hot sweat.
Suppose additional minutes could rescue you from the
inevitable human fate. Would you wake up?
Would you feign death to the duvet?
Suppose the unfriendly street cat accidentally let a dog’s bark slip.
You’d glance over twice, rub your eyes clear of any cognitive debris.
The isolation of being the only witness to nature’s error is unrelenting.
Suppose the animal was neither cat nor dog, but an omen’s manipulation.
Would you listen? Would you blame it on your own faulty acoustics?
Suppose your ex-lover’s shirt appears on a hanger
in your closet, decades after a searing goodbye.
You’d graze the fabric with your fingertips and hope your
husband doesn’t walk in. You’d inhale the lingering
cologne and exist in a realm of teenage lust.
Suppose the shirt is now monopolizing space in your brain as well as your closet.
Would you put it on? Or would you destroy it in the name of the here-and-now?
Suppose you could…
Turn back the clock to reveal a younger you
Receive messages from another dimension
Conjure up a lost love with a piece of clothing
Would you? Or would you act forever a slave to plausibility?
Hannah Tracy is a poet from San Diego, California. She values prose that feels like stubbing your toe on a bed frame, or landing on a mattress made of clouds. In between highs and lows, you can find her watching Youtube for cats, or maybe just on instagram @unfinished.bug.