In Every Universe
words by Melanie C., art by Jenna Clare Trinidad
Do you think we’re best friends in every universe?
Best friends? I think that’s an understatement.
I can’t remember how exactly we reached “best friendship”—how we became a package, a binary star system, us—but something tells me it was sometime between the first time I rang your doorbell and the last time I saw you cry (and you never cry). Or maybe it was between our first middle school Instagram post and our first “fight.” Or perhaps it was between our unspoken daily snack swap and our weekly sleepovers in my twin-XL bed—with me curled up at the head of the bed and you at the foot.
Something tells me there has to have been a moment that marks when our existences in separate solar systems fused into our all-encompassing luminosity of radiant smiles, glowing giggles, and twinkling voices that blend into one being. A moment before we linked arms forever and never looked back. I cannot figure out what it was that joined us at the hip, that gravitationally bound us to each other in a fixed orbit of otherwise unrelated stars.
I keep taking, accruing more mass than I can handle until I inevitably collapse in on myself—a black hole.
We are a strange pair, you and I—a varsity athlete who happened to share a class with a band kid. A lover of lyrics sharing her AirPods with an airhead who bops along to the beat. A red dwarf star that shares dresses with other red dwarves but cannot with the larger mid-sized star to which it is anchored forever. Even though you share as much as you can with me, I can’t help but want more—to be one of your red dwarf twins, to be perfect and worthy of being your friend. In pursuit of this wish, I keep taking, accruing more mass than I can handle until I inevitably collapse in on myself—a black hole.
But you never let me become a black hole. Even when the room suddenly begins to close in on me, and I can feel a million hands creeping up and down my spine, and all I can think is to run. Even when my breaths shrink into high-pitched huffs, and streams of tears glide down my cheeks, and my hands won’t stop shaking even as I grip the bathroom sink. Even when I want to be the floor, want to fold in on myself, want to become nothing. That constant stream of desire to be a perfect red dwarf star disappears from my mind as I dial your number. You run to me and hold me in your arms, swallowing my tears as your own until we become one to the naked eye. You remind me that I am everything.
We are the same mind housed in two bodies—two celestial bodies in it for the long haul, for better or for worse.
Despite our differences, I think that we are, at our cores, very similar. We are the same mind housed in two bodies—two celestial bodies in it for the long haul, for better or for worse. I don’t need to be a red dwarf star like you to be your match because you are already mine.
To answer your question, there is not a single universe in which we aren’t platonic soulmates tied together by some greater force, whether it be an invisible string, gravitational orbit, or a simple embrace.
Yes, I believe we are.
