The Draft That Got Away

There’s a parallel track running somewhere near—
the other sequence, the alternate year
where I kept going past the six-week wall,
where the enthusiasm didn’t stall
but carried into the thing itself. That self
is on a different shelf
of the possible, making the choices
I didn’t make, running with different voices.

The road I didn’t take still runs out there—
the alternate sequence, the other air
of the different chosen. I can sketch it:
the persistence past the point I exit,
the follow-through I didn’t follow through.
I’m not in mourning—I’m acknowledging the two
tracks running parallel, the self I took
and the other one: the alternate book.

I’m not the other self. I’m this one—
the one who stopped where I stopped, the sum
of the choices I actually made. The philosophy
of the alternate doesn’t offer me
the other path—just the viewing
of the comparison. The pursuing
of the parallel is the forgetting
of the present. I’m here. The letting-go: setting.

Both tracks are real in the physics of choice—
the one I took has its specific voice,
its knowledge, the fluency
of the path I’m actually on. The truancy
of the other self is their loss too—
they don’t have this. I have this. The two
parallel selves acknowledge each other
from a distance. Fair exchange. Both: further.