Physics

If I had been born
Somewhere else
I wouldn't be the same person
Nor have the same thoughts.
Those things
My past and potential
Would not exist.
But there is finite mass in the world.
Nothing can be gained or lost.
That's a rule of physics.
Where would my present reality go?
It must exist somewhere.
My life, my loves, my actuality
All would coalesce into a
Single floating entity,
Existing in an ethereal netherworld
Waiting to be absorbed by another person.
Claimed by a close match
Who I would have been.
In my new life
Raised on an obscure island in French Polynesia
I would assume another person's identity.


© Poem Fix http://www.poemfix.com 2012
Drawing by Louis Choris, 1916