Poem: August 19, 2019

Ella Frances Sanders Quote (or What to Read When I Pass)
from Eating the Sun: Small Musings on a Vast Universe

A lot of our time is spent trying
to tie up loose ends, trying
to shape disorder
into something recognizably smooth,
trying to escape
the very limits that hold us close,

happily ignoring rough edges
and the inevitable.

We separate ourselves out
into past, present, and future,

if only to show that we have changed,
that we know better,
that we have understood something
inherent;

if only to draw neat lines
from start to finish
without looking back.

The problem is that chaos is always
only ever sitting just across the table,
frequently glancing up from its newspaper,
from its cup filled with discolored
and imploding stars.

Because chaos too waits.

Waits for you to notice it,
for you to realize

that it's the most dazzling thing you've ever seen,

for all of your atoms to collectively shriek
in belated recognition
and stare, mouth open,
at how exquisitely embedded it is in everything.

Because

we are not designed to be more orderly
than anything else;

seams have a tendency to come apart with time-

you and the universe are the same in this way,
which makes for a delicately
overwhelming
struggle.

So, then,
if you can't ever end things neatly,
can't ever put them back
quite the way you found them,
surely the alternative is

to remain stubbornly carbonated with possibility,

to never rest from your rotation.
To keep assembling stories

between us,

stories about how everything was everything,
about how much we loved.