They found one another. Of course they did. It doesn’t matter how. Fate finds a way.
I see some of them sunglass-faced sitting outside of cafés laughing over espressos, playfully touching elbows. I know they’re whispering about me after they make love—two heads on one pillow, tracing the chin of the other.
Another two pair up, vacation across Italy together, and pose for pics in front of beautiful sunsets and seas stretching into horizons. They look so happy because they are. Of course they are. Why wouldn’t they be? They have nothing in common but me—and that’s all the bond they seem to need.
A couple of my exes find another couple of my exes and double-date. Those four find another four, those eight another eight. This goes on—a big bang of sorts, a chain reaction. My multiple pasts expand exponentially into a future, coalescing. The gravity sinks in. There are larger dinner parties, planned camping trips. They meet parents, exchange holiday gifts, celebrate birthdays.
Things get serious. All my exes marry each other, blend into one big family, buy one big house for all of them to live in harmony. They honeymoon in Paris together—all of them grinning in front of more vistas. They tag each other online, flood my feed even when I’ve unfollowed each one months ago. Years ago. Millenia ago. But somehow, they’re all here, defying an algorithm, sharing one sunset, blissful smiles frozen across all their faces, all holding hands in one big circle—the hands clasping tighter in joy, the circle closing in toward a group embrace, a wedding band around the ring finger of each ex, circles within circles.
All my exes form a flawless sphere that grows so wonderfully heavy with love that it tips a critical mass, collapses on itself, rips a hole through space toward a perfect singularity, creates a new existence on the other side of this one, births a beginning by killing this end making sure I’ll never reach through. It’s physics, after all.
Science says what’ll happen next: all I’ll see is all of them stuck forever on an event horizon, finally happy, beaming with peace, while all they’ll see when they look back at my universe speeding through time is star after star slowly dimming, planets drifting out of orbit so far from each other, and my world—once ours—growing so cold.