What Never Happened Still Casts a Shadow

In the timeline where the bombs didn’t drop,

where treaties held like promises we meant,

the city still stands—glass towers catching light

that hasn't learned to break yet.

>

I walk streets my grandmother never touched,

past monuments to wars that stayed hypothetical,

past children who will grow into a world

where loss was never language.

>

The libraries here are full of books

we burned in my time. Full of names

that turned to ash mid-sentence.

Here, they are just authors—

alive long enough to finish.

>

There is a museum for the war that almost was.

Everything inside is clean. Undamaged.

A photograph of a man

who almost gave the order—

his finger resting, undecided, above history.

>

I press my hand to the glass.

It's warm. Everything here is warm.

>

My daughter—

who only exists where I do not—

runs through the park where no crater blooms.

She doesn't know I'm watching from between worlds,

that I'm on borrowed time wearing a borrowed face.

>

She laughs.

It echoes off buildings that were never ruins.

And I understand, too late,

we didn’t just lose the city.

>

We lost the future

where children never learn

how to forget what never happened.

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