Every Atom | No. 169

Introduction to Every Atom by project curator Brian Clements

 

The Singularity        

(  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