I Want To Believe

feelings I can't explain & time travel for poetry's sake

I think about belief a lot. 

I have that poster with the UFO, you know the one, it says “I Want To Believe” across the bottom. I look at it everyday, as I drink my coffee, as I vacuum my dog’s copper hair from the rug. I look at it as I take my medication every night, and as I wait for it to make the thorny edges of my mind blurry and warm, soft enough to fall asleep inside. 

I’ve always thought of myself as skeptical and realistic. Logical, grounded. But as I get older, this version of myself no longer feels true. When my twin sister and I were newborns, my mother brought us to a psychic and had our charts done. The psychic said the souls of my sister and I had been traveling together through many lives. That I’d always been protecting her, that she’d always known to be gentle with me. And it feels true now, even if it didn’t feel true the first 100 times I’d heard the story over the course of my childhood. But at this point, it makes sense. I won’t fight it. 

I believe in past lives, that our souls come into being over and over, as many times as they need to. Not to right any wrongs or learn any lessons, but just to experience every touch, taste, and feeling that there is. And maybe, once we’ve felt it all, our souls go somewhere else. I don’t believe anyone was Abraham Lincoln or Marilyn Monroe, I believe these reincarnations are anonymous, and that the particulars aren’t what’s important or even what’s knowable. It’s all hidden in the things you can’t explain about yourself, the passions that pull at you for seemingly no reason, the aches you can’t dissolve. It’s deja vu, it’s a crescent moon over the Rocky Mountains bringing unexpected tears rushing down your cheeks. Why am I crying?  I often don’t know and that’s okay with me. It feels like something old and inevitable is moving through me, something ancient and inexplicable and it’s my job to feel it, to cry, to wonder, to marvel. There’s no giant chess game in the sky, there’s just crisp mountain air, the taste of snow on your tongue, the warmth of my hand in yours. They’re the same stars. They’re always the same stars.

Early on in our relationship, my boyfriend made me promise him something. He made me promise that if any version of him ever came to me and told me he had time traveled, I had to believe him, right there, in that moment. At first, I thought he was joking, but he was completely serious. He looked me deep in the eyes. “Just promise me,” he said. And maybe that’s when I fell in love with him. He had a gut deep conviction that if he were to ever time travel, he’d come find me first. I thought that was beautiful, I still do. Especially as I read and watch more time travel stories, as I dive deeper into a concept that has captivated our imaginations for so long. The Lost episode “The Constant” sticks out the most to me. In it, Desmond time travels, but only in his mind. He blacks out and suddenly it isn’t 2004, it’s 1996. And he’s utterly, completely lost, his consciousness being flung through time so quickly that he can’t get his bearings. He comes to learn that he needs an anchor, a constant, something that will never change for him no matter what year it is, something that will make him know where he is in time. His constant is the woman he loves. And with this realization, his consciousness being yanked through time stops being painful, stops being terrifying. It turns into dreams that he knows are a past reality. It becomes informative. I love this story because it’s time travel without all of the blinking lights and chrome of traditional science fiction. It’s time travel without a historical agenda. It’s time travel purely for love, for poetry, for personal introspection. It’s private, it’s intimate. It makes me believe. 

I grew up Catholic, though it was more about private education than any belief system. I dabble in numerology. I don’t care for the zodiac. I’m not great at parties. Instead of asking what you do for a living, I’m more likely to ask if anything strange has ever happened to you that you still can’t explain. Once in a while, when I least expect it, I’ll feel the presence of a dead friend like a glowing mist rolling through my quiet living room. And then I feel a love that I haven’t felt before, it feels almost religious. I open my front door into the night, stare at the sky from my porch steps. Tears stream down my face and I’m smiling, I’m smiling and tasting the salt and suddenly, I’m not alone. All the love I’ve given and taken, in this life and in any of my others, rolls through my body, flows through my veins in a river of luminous scarlet. It’s a love that tells me that it’s not over. It’s never really over. It’s all happening at once, layered on top of each other, pressing me into the shape of who I am, playing a song that I’m trying to learn the words to.

So, here I am, beckoning to you out on the rocky cliffside, waving to the moon, breathing in the tides. I’m leading you down a path to a small house with candlelit windows, curtains moving in the breeze, the radio playing a song you heard once in a dream. I’m inviting you onto the porch, offering you a seat on the top step. I’m asking you to be as quiet as you can, to let yourself feel everything at once. Look back at your life in silence, the film rolling out unsteadily, images grainy and warm. Hold my hand in the dark, say whatever comes to mind. Wander through the memories wrapped in a silky haze, seek out the ones that still have teeth. We’re safe here together, you and me and everyone in between. Nothing is ever over. You just have to believe.

The record keeps spinning. It never stops. 

Eli McMullen - Slowing The Night, 2024