I may have opened a can of wormholes
when yesterday I texted my next self,
for when I woke this morning, someone
had messaged me from what was surely
a different timezone. She (he?) had learned
I was all about our helping each other out,
was the gist of it, so I to her (him?),
You’re not? Then she (he?) to me, Oh yes.
I’m you, but before.

How magical. I’ve so many questions,
I tapped. So it would seem, she (he?) shot
back, and though usually down for a little
irony, I have to admit it smarted a little.
No, I told myself. Open your heart. Don’t
be afraid, so across some stretch of ages
I to her (him?), I’ll take that feedback.
Now, what do you see? What am I missing?
What can you tell me that I might use?

There was a long delay then, more than
a few minutes, and frankly my imagination
ran wild with the historical possibilities.
Vesuvius and Pompei perhaps, Vichy and
a knock at the door, Ghana and the slave
trader’s truncheon. Are you o.k.? I finally
asked. Yeah. Fine. I had to take a piss, she (he?),
probably he, answered, then, Listen, I don’t
have a lot of time for this. I just want to say

you kind of blew it, and I was really hoping
you wouldn’t. Better luck next time. Then
nothing, and I felt so very alone, a forgotten
prisoner on a dead moon in an unmapped
star system without mail delivery. What
could I do but delete the conversation, turn
up the heat against today’s winter, and take
my coffee. Through the window I watched
a crow light on the blistering snow.

This morning, after brushing
and flossing, I messaged
whatever part of me will be
reincarnated in the next life.
Commit yourself from the very first
like an idiot saint, I tapped.
A few minutes later, he (she?) replied.
Happily he (she?) reads English or
knows how to use Google Translate.
Who is this? he (she?) wrote.
You’re not in my contacts.
Then me, I’m you, but before.
Hope all is well. Good work so far.
You’re doing just fine.
Eat lots of fruits and vegetables.
And when your heart aches,
lie down and let it wash over you.

Si vous êtes Dieu, vengez-vous! —de Sade

On a good day, I could throw a chalice
from the skylight in my apartment here
across the avenue de Paris into the once
royal château that by some logic I can’t
quite follow became a prison and the place
they kept Sade after he paid a fanmaker
forty-eight livres to make blasphemy with him.

It was a short stay of just three weeks.
I imagine his taking leave finally
with a lascivious look at the heavenly
Sainte-Chapelle. His belle-mère
was to reform him then, but there was
the débauche sordide in Marseilles,
the chocolate aphrodisiacs and sodomy,

and Donatien found himself back
at Vincennes, though in a cell with a view.
I crossed over one day to take a tour
of the place, thinking it would help me
imagine what that might have been like
for the marquis, but the French are modest
people—as in fireworks, so with historical

curiosities: Sade’s ignominy is not on
display. But here I am just across the way
from that forbidding keep, and some things
could not have changed all that much.
In January, when the weather is grey as a nun
for weeks at a time, he would have watched
tuxedoed magpies carve sharp arcs against the sky.