Wake: World, Arrived

Reality, divided into light and matter.
A moment travels from the universe’s birth.

A massless noun converts into light, then reverses.
This, the moment when the universe begins

to shine. Mother’s voice whispering by the crib,
brushing with my first series of particulars.

A probability turns true, tips and flashes
slicing the light into particles it daringly

hails through. Father, teaching me to count.
Cosmic microwave background sharpens

to oldest light. Coldest light, barely enough
to move a thermometer above absolute

zero, whose space stretched as it traveled,
whose waves grew longer. And space,

hijacking the afterglow. I spend hours,
13 billion years, floating around like this
—

stretched, faint, and quiet. You nod,
a kind of blessed observance. I, a high-flying

balloon, raining into space as matter unties itself
into that moment, searing its refrain on our tiny maps.