A Conditional Probability

“You’re one in a million kind of soul.”

The kind of compliment that puts your head in the cloud nine,

but not today.

None of us is a scarce entity, nor exceptional. If even each of us were indeed a one-in-a-million kind of soul, with 7.5 billions of individuals we have on Earth right now, we could develop a society consisting of 7,500 human beings of our kind, of souls with mutual similarities.

“I find a better version of myself in you,” you said, to me, or potentially to any other 7,498 humans out there if you happen to come across any of them before meeting me—in the case where you happen to be the worst of this version. Seven point five billions of souls exist today, and really, one in a million kind of soul won’t be my preferrable line of flatteries considering my fancy in anthropology. Who said I feel confident in competing with the other 7,499? A million is merely a faux hypothetical statistic we invent in attempt to tell someone how much we praise them—as if there’s little opportunity for us to meet the other 7,499 people as such.

But there is always such opportunity, isn’t there?

Sometimes given, unanticipatedly.

Just like here, now. And here I am, left alone speculating. Why does the universe drag us into this? Why this rendezvous? Why now, here? Why your pinstripe sweatshirts? Why all obscure movies and historical tell-tales and political quizzes that brought us into endless midnight talks? Why the yellowish skin of yours, and the fuzzy edges of your thick hair, and the light-coloured freckles under your eyes?

Why a whole lot of these and other things that the two of you share in common?

Wouldn’t stand a chance of meeting any other person with such traits and qualities,

unless, probably, if I happen to land on

the other side of the Earth.

Which I did, which led me into this, and I regret having said.

But even if I do, there’s just so little possibility for that person to share a mutual fascination with me;

I mean, what are even the chances?

Yet the answer will surprise me.

It also surprises me how easily things could fall into time and places, without even us planning, without even a single warning, without asking. No matter how cautiously I’ve been acting. When calculations do not make the best sense, yet once I begin to accept that this might be just a cryptically pleasant work of the universe, it becomes slightly digestable that way.

Let your body sink into me

Like your favorite memory

Like a line of poetry

Or a fucking fit of honesty

You know it saves me to think even for a little while

I owned the set of shoulders that you came to rely on

I hear your voice resembling that guy on the radio as I submerge myself in guilt, as I try to sleep the provoking thoughts about the probability of us away.

In case our timing is right

In case you need more from me

Than a bit of advice

Or a tongue full of sympathy

But they reappear—always—with every daybreak, with every crepuscle we endure,

and with all the time in the world that we have.

Leave a Reply