Fragments of the future

When I was a child, I used to dream of you.
Truly dream:
to close my eyes, drift off to sleep,
and find you there.

You were a stranger
who looked exactly like you.

I remember the grey hair,
the eyes,
the voice.

Nothing else.

I never understood
why I dreamt so often
of someone who did not exist.

Now I am no longer certain
they were dreams at all.

Perhaps they were fragments of the future,
tiny cracks in time
through which I could glimpse
without even knowing.

It has happened to me with other things.

And so, when I saw you,
so many years later,
in a country that once
would have seemed impossible to me,
I recognised you at once.

It makes no sense, I know.

Perhaps it does not in your world.

But in my system,
in the strange logic
by which I arrange the universe,
everything falls into place.

I fear, however,
that you had not yet awakened.

Perhaps we are still living
in parallel worlds.

Perhaps, in truth,
we never really met.

Perhaps it all happened in a dream,
as it did when I was a child.

Or perhaps I am still dreaming
of the moment
when, at last, you recognise me.