J.J. Smith's "Numbers"

Today is no more significant than the next

but on Earth

today, Timothy McVeigh was sentenced for execution;

today, the Beatles had their last #1 hit, “The Long and Winding Road”;

today, King Charles I married Henrietta Maria of France;

the Edict of Milan granted religious freedom throughout the Roman Empire;

Hitler and Mussolini met;

man-made probe Pioneer 10 passed beyond the orbit of Neptune (now in deep space, out of reach, out of contact–

though, much is out of contact

such as our expectations of time and space,

our paltry attempts of making sense of where we are or why we are.)

Today, Thomas Young

Carl Schmidt

Steve-O, a Roman general, a Holy Emperor

and myself were born. Today, a Japanese sculptor died; so have Macedonian poets and Hungarian biophysicists; also, Muslim clerics and Norwegian athletes.

And I, the American author, am here to fill some nonexistent void we all tap into, this anomaly of time and space,

this networking abstraction;

in it, I am essentially no one. And I’ll do well to remind myself of it.

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