Contingent

thirteen point eight billion years ago
something decided to exist
instead of not —
a distinction so fine
no instrument has ever measured it,
a preference so total
it made everything.
supernovae seeded the field.
carbon spread like a rumor.
single cells spent a billion years
arguing about whether to divide.
and then the long slow work of becoming —
fish deciding on legs,
something arboreal dropping to the ground
and standing up,
Bending towards the horizon
for reasons it couldn’t name.
your grandmother’s grandmother
crossed something difficult… A prairie, an ocean…
and lived.
mine too.

I have read the numbers Lightman gives —
the ones that are supposed to make you feel
how unlikely you are,
how the universe had no particular obligation
to include you —
and they do that.
they do that.

but what they don’t account for
is the further improbability
that whatever made you possible
made me possible
on the same planet
in the same century
in the same landlocked state
in the same unremarkable decade —
that our grandmothers crossed the same difficult things
and lived
and kept going
until the distance between us
was nothing
a car couldn’t cover.

I am trying to say:
the miracle was already finished
before either of us arrived.
we were just the proof.

the morning light is doing that spectacular thing…
Bending itself at will as it penetrates the blinds—
And turning ordinary dust
into something you’d drive an hour to see.

you are still asleep.

I am standing in the kitchen
thinking about how many things
had to not go wrong
for there to be a you
whose shoulder I know by heart,
a you who loves her coffee
just the same way I do,
a you whose name
I still say to myself sometimes
—the way you check your pocket
for your phone or wallet —
just to make sure
you’re still there.
thirteen point eight billion years.
and you’re still there.