r/MandelaEffect
by Matija Slogar

Alright so this might sound crazy
but does anyone else feel like the days used to last longer
but go by faster, slip through their fingers? does anyone else
feel like they took three lifetimes to grow up
now years slip like seconds, like
coffee brew faster, like
they start it and the day is over. No map truthers, please,
but does anyone else notice how parents seem human now
they can’t kiss anything better, don’t even try to,
does anyone else remember when love didn’t feel conditional?
when they were yet to learn that it was, were yet
to do something unforgivable? when
their parents looked at them with pride, not
resignation, does anyone else
think trees stretched longer, back then,
does anyone else think they’re crawling back into the earth?
does anyone else want to crawl in with them? is anyone
else, too, scared of what they have accepted,
of how the unthinkable didn’t kill them,
when they knew for sure that it would,
of how much they know they can survive now
of how much they don’t want to survive,
of how what hurt
so bad
now only stings a little,
how their parents
get no scorn, anymore,
only pity,
only
echoes of what love felt like
when they stretched taller than the trees?

Matija Slogar is a Croatian translator, with poetry in places like perhappened, Queerlings, and lavender bones. Find him on twitter @sloga_r.

Image by StockSnap from Pixabay.