42

Everything is everything inside itself.

We are worlds inside worlds inside worlds
with worlds inside worlds inside us.

Don’t think you’re not a galaxy
just because you’re in one.

Do you know how many stars sleep in your skin?

Your DNA is a rolling scroll of story:
of history, of herstory, of theirstory, of ourstory.

We are all connected.
We are all chapters of the same book
within a book within a book.

There are ecosystems in your eyelashes.
Microorganisms are only micro
when we’re looking through a macro lens.

Aren’t we the microorganisms of our universe?
Our universe, just an atom in another.

We carry stories in our bindings
we don’t even know are there.

We live and we live and we live
until the story folds in
and we’re back at the beginning
which was never really a beginning at all.

As published by Raritan Valley Federation of Libraries through the New Brunswick Free Public Library, spring 2022