Dave Bonta's "Hypothesis" starts with a strange, playful question: what if another self is moving inside you, step for step, every time you walk or sit? The speaker follows the idea wherever it leads. Maybe our bodies are vessels, or even servants, for this inner presence, and our urges to hold someone or to lose ourselves in concentration are really the hidden self reaching toward another hidden self outside us.
The tone is curious and half-teasing. "Sounds plausible, doesn't it?" invites us to play along, while the speaker admits discomfort with the idea. Then aging enters. White hair, a glimmer behind the eyes, and cracks in the skin showing "an inner blue" become signs of something inside slowly coming into view. The mystics' claim that heaven is within gets a physical, almost literal twist.
The ending is quiet and moving. Whether or not the idea is true, it makes the speaker want to pay attention to life, even to "counting every last breath." The mood is wonder tinged with mortality.