they say
our galaxy
— everything that ever existed —
was created when
a little atom rebelled, or perhaps
merely made a mistake
was too attracted to
another little atom and they
p u l l e d t o g e t h e r
just the tiniest bit and the
p e r f
e c t a
r r a y
of inchoate atoms, nonexistent matter was
yanked out of order, the
g r i d
b r
o k e n,
every little
marble r o l l i n g however it pleased and
we now call this the Big Bang, which I
find confounding because
aren’t atoms the s m a l l e s t unit of matter?
and it seems like an interesting metaphor
for our society:
an individual
chose to dEviAte and
started a revolution.
but who was the individual?
what pulled the trigger that started the chain?
who flicked the switch that set the Goldberg in motion?
no; that metaphor can’t be quite right — for we
as humankind
have always been obsessed with
doing the un-done simply for the sake of having done
taking leaps not to enjoy the view from midair
but for the sake of having leapt
the chance to succeed astronomically albeit accompanied
by the chance to fail colossally.
we
imperfections of the universe
are such fickle things.
—
Madeleine Bohn is a lover of language based in Madison, Wisconsin. She was the inaugural Madison Youth Poet Laureate in 2022-2023 and the 2023 Youth Ambassador for the Madison Public Libraries’ We Read: Youth Voices contest and anthology. She has published work in various chapbooks, including Love You to Pieces (Angela Trudell Vasquez, 2024) and the 2021 We Read: Youth Voices anthology, and was a finalist for the 2021 We Read: Youth Voices contest.
