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