Paratopia
Deborah L. Davitt
“Where did Mama go?” a child wailed in the city of glass.
“She left us, my son, she went into the past.”
“But why did she leave? Didn’t she love me?
Mama, please, come back!”
The words cut like broken mirrors,
echoing through eternity,
burning my heart with the salt of regret,
the pain of them nothing more than I deserved.
I’d left him there in the present,
as if going out to buy a gift,
but the only gift I’d wanted to give
was a better future—every parent’s dream.
Our world of corporate espionage,
lack of privacy, designer offspring,
and soot-stained skies?
It seemed better that it never should have been.
So I took a leap into the past,
to rewrite it as they rewrite our minds,
but didn’t realize that I couldn’t reshape
my own time, so much as start another line.
My son’s still alive, in another universe;
If there’s any way back, it’s to
accept that old reality’s constraints.
Any utopia I build here,
he can never share.
And every day I spend in this place,
I hear his voice echoing inside my mind,
promising that if I’ll just come back,
he’ll be good forever.
What kind of fool was I,
not to try to make my own world, my own time,
a better place while living in it?
The kind who justly faces eternity alone.
