Imagine if you were an earthworm.

Imagine that you have an earthworm girlfriend, and the two of you have been together as long as your worm brains can remember. You love each other in a crazy, primitive, soulmate kind of way. You can’t even think what it would be like without her. You can barely think at all.

Then one day you wake up and you have turned into a human.

You are huge, like a human, and understand all the things humans understand. You have a beer belly and a New York Rangers cap. Holy shit! Yesterday all you knew about was crawling in the dirt. Today you have a bachelor’s degree in sports marketing. Today you understand about taxes and the solar system. You read and write Spanish and English. You have a best friend, an ex-wife, and a kid you see on weekends. You have been to Brazil and Europe, which, to an earthworm, would be like visiting distant galaxies, except that the very idea of “galaxies” would melt an earthworm’s mind.

Do you think you’d be all heartbroken about losing your earthworm girlfriend? Your earthworm self?

You wouldn’t.

Actually, here’s the thing: You and your worm girlfriend are actually both in there, smooshed together in your vast new brain. You and a trillion other worms.

You do not think about being trillions of separate earthworms. Why would you? You move ahead with being your new, awesome, ancient self.

—

Everything makes sense to you now.

Time. Gravity. Which fork to use. Zippers. Infinite dimensions. Tacos.

It’s all part of a dream you are having.

A billion years pass.

Or they would, if time weren’t just part of the dream.

So you dream a billion years. What’s the difference?

The billion years pass like a great sleeping ocean.

—

And then one day you dream that you are an old soul named Milo, standing knee-deep in a river, holding hands with an old soul named Suzie.

Everything comes back around. Everything.

—

You forget that it is a dream.

And you pick up where you left off, with a long, deep kiss.

(You remember understanding gravity and Chinese, but it’s fading.)

After a while, you walk out into the river, and let it take you, and give way to the weirdness of being born.

You hold hands. Nothing tries to pull you apart.

You hang together in the water, between lives and worlds. The river carries you, time enfolds you, and catfish swim through you.