Reincarnation

Start with a millimeter, a line this long: -. Chop it into thousandths, each a micron, the size of tiniest bugs. Shave from a micron ten thousand wafers, a degree of slenderness beyond imagining— scale of the fantastic, the durable, the atom. So many of them comprise you, probability suggests, a million or more once were likely Shakespeare’s, Nero’s, and Christ’s. Part of you is part of them. When, at times undesignated, atoms flee collector you, each finds another use— in poet, leaf, or dog— reincarnated. But rest in peace, for unless you read a hundred years from when I write, your heart is not a part of mine.