Is one you were too busy to say. In this universe, your brother has done something foolish again. Has forgotten to let the cat out. Has let the dishes run into the sink like a river. You are angry again, you never text him back. He should learn not to make mistakes. In this universe, your brother finally lets the cat out, but it runs across the street and so does your brother. In this universe, a car chases your brother down like a drink, and only the cat survives. His phone still silent on the counter, waiting for your reply.
In this universe, your ex needs one more hit of coke. Some more glass, some more white, some more sugar. It turns him into a ghost again, wasted, and your bed is the only one he has left, everyone else has turned him away, he just needs one more night here before he gets the help he needs. But you know him, you think, you think he will snort until the cabinet is empty, will annoy you again, and so you turn him away too. In this universe, the overdose takes him that night like a thief, and the flowers he was going to give you before he went into rehab. In this universe, your bed still had enough room for him, just one last time.
In this universe, your father wants a ballgame with you before you go away to college. Just cheering in the stands and a good wide swing and hot dogs together like when you were three. But a baseball game is no place to go with your aging father, with your balding father, who wears tshirts still stained with old sweat, who still says he loves you in public even when he knows it embarrasses you. So you leave him at the ballgame by himself, with only soda and a large popcorn he was going to share with you. You leave him at the ballgame alone. And in this universe, hours later he is hanging from the ceiling fan in the kitchen, loneliness gotten the best of him.
In this universe, your best friend asks you to visit the next time you find yourself in town, so she can show you her new apartment, the fish swimming in the green glass bowl in the entryway, the succulents she’s so proud of, the new rug and the tiny stove. But you want to meet the stranger from the internet instead for drinks, want that dark red desire in the bedroom beneath a warm body with a mouth between your legs. Want that slow drowning of sex instead. So in this universe, the morning after you never came to visit, the morning after you came for a stranger instead, your best friend has a bullet through the head from her ex, whom you always warned her about.
But in some other universe, the last goodbye is one you weren’t too busy to say. And in some other universe, your brother knows you love him when he reads your text before the car comes, your ex drifts away in your bed knowing that at least someone never gave up on him, a little less high than he would have been alone. And in some other universe, your father thinks twice about the rope hidden in the garage after he drives you home, tired and sweaty and a little bit hopeful after the ballgame together, and your best friend never let her ex into her apartment because she was with you, and for you, she had all the time in the world. And in some other universe, it only took a second to say your last goodbye.
And in some other universe, sometimes saying your last goodbye kept someone from saying theirs.
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