Can’t Quite Picture It

A lot of people, in fact, never exist.
Start with everyone everyone imagines,
Including your projections of future selves
You never became. There are all the fictions

Crowding the shelves and swelling the files, heroes,
Role models, villains, gods, and demons. Sort of
People as well. The mistakes, the misfiled names,
The clerical errors, the blips in machines,

Statistical people who never exist.
And then there may be real, potential people,
Depending on how physics actually works,
The vast cloud of people who can’t quite exist.