Universal Multitudes is a journal.
A scrapbook.
A collection of truths and imagined timelines.

It began as a way to hold the story of a boy I love and all the versions of us that existed, still exist, or never quite did.

I wanted to write about the quiet things.
The words left unspoken. The moments that slipped by.
The soft, aching versions of love that are still tender, even when they’re scared.

Some of what lives here really happened.
Some of it only lives in a version of the universe where we had more time, or fewer fears.
But all of it is real to me.

This is where I go to remember, to reflect, to rewrite, and to reimagine.
It’s where I let love be both fragile and infinite.

You don’t have to understand it.
It’s enough that it exists.

—Xinlin
July 2025