Summoned at three, I soothe my daughter’s cries
and, turning back toward bed, turn off her light.
Out of the dark, a galaxy appears,
pale stars scattered across the plaster skies
by some other child who thought this room at night
would be his always. The moons, the meteors—
all his hours spent peeling and arranging—
for two years now have hung above my head
entirely unnoticed. The old wives’ tale
says all the stars whose light we see are dead,
but that’s not true. We fail to see them changing
as they change. And on this closer, human scale
and present tense, this room, this child I’ve kissed,
this night will always and never quite exist.

^{(after Stephen Hawking)}

Do you sometimes want to wake up to the singularity
we once were?

so compact nobody
needed a bed, or food or money—

nobody hiding in the school bathroom
or home alone

pulling open the drawer
where the pills are kept.

For every atom belonging to me as good
Belongs to you.   Remember?
There was no   Nature.    No
 them.   No tests
to determine if the elephant
grieves her calf    or if

the coral reef feels pain.    Trashed
oceans don’t speak English or Farsi or French;

would that we could wake up   to what we were
—when we were ocean    and before that
to when sky was earth, and animal was energy, and rock was
liquid and stars were space and space was not

at all—nothing

before we came to believe humans were so important
before this awful loneliness.

Can molecules recall it?
what once was?    before anything happened?

No I, no We, no one. No was
No verb      no noun
only a tiny tiny dot brimming with

is is is is is

All   everything   home