On Being Tiny

after a sleepless night of sin

i watched this fellow

named

neal degrasse tyson

break open the universe and lay it out square.

he wasn’t like the dapper and spectacled atom bombers

who shouldn’t even have been allowed to die,

or the big, genial, contemporary geniuses,

the Hawkings and Dawkins,

who write books.

nothing could be worse.

with neal it was simple. 
he said

the three most abundant elements in the universe

are the three most abundant elements in the human body.

they exist in the same proportions.

carbon, which is number three
can make more molecules and chemicals 
than all the other elements combined.

numbers two and one are

oxygen and hydrogen.

blah blah blah, but you have to know

where the elements come from. 
it's those giant melting pots: the stars.

as the commercials came on
i started thinking differently about space
and ever since
night has been distressing

not because we are so far away from everything else,

but because we are already everywhere.

this, neal said, 
should give us a sense of belonging.

well fuck me, i thought, and turned off the tv.