• i push the button.
• a seam in the dirty, used, industrial nylon
• of our reality
• pops in front of me
• brought into existence through that cobbled together machine
• that i half-jokingly call my baby

//

• i stare through that void between fabric worlds in my rose-tinted welding goggles
• the nearest one, an ersatz parallel of our own
• but a little less dingy, chiffon and pink
• with herculean effort and heavy-duty cutters i break through
• into that foreign familiarity
• brighter, happier, utopian

//

• compared to my dirty mechanics overalls
• lived-in and stained
• this is the purest i’ve ever seen
• and i see her?them?
• the me that got to be me
• without the grit of a broken world

//

• she is beautiful, but theres something missing
• that hard-scrabble fighting spirit and the masculine shell that protects
• the hidden core of femininity
• its all on the outside
• heart on her lab coat
• i can’t relate one bit

//

• it’s a nice reminder
• this escape
• but it isn’t home.
• i turn around
• because even though she looks like me
• that easy, peaceful smile isn’t one i’ve ever known

//

• where i’m from
• its all a fight
• i’d be bored here,
• anxious over a coming conflict that never does
• i know i could come back, but i wont need to
• i know a better world is possible

//

• all the running i did in my youth is over now
• my magnum opus achieved what i thought i wanted it to
• but that escape was merely a lesson
• into the world that could be
• just like the mechanic is not the chiffon scientist
• the history is different.

//

• it wont be that world, exactly
• because the history is different

//

• but it will be something better.