as far as
we know, everything
was made
of numbers:
little ones, like raindrops,
tumbled down
in total darkness,
and fell through
the holes
in older, fatter,
slower numbers
before landing
on piles
of the broken spines
of the numbers
that fell to the earth
a second earlier.
And over vast time,
the steady pattern
of their falling,
overlapping with
the rhythm
of the piles
that kept on rising
is exactly
how the world came
to be as it is:
a contradictory
accumulation
of falling down
and vanishing;
a heavyweight thing
that nevertheless shrinks
and contracts
at the very same rate
that it's stacking;
an untold, unfurling
possibility space
made of just so
much nothing—
and nothing
so extraordinary
could ever be
less satisfying.
