J.J. Smith's "Numbers"

If I could stare long enough at a single point . . . say, I was standing in a room and staring—not into a corner or at a blank wall, but if I could stare long enough, holding my friend’s hand while I did so (because her presence provides such strength), I could see into that spot, into this empty air, this vacuum, this invisible little nothingness between the ceiling and the floor and the walls, the part we walk through daily without feeling it pass through us—

if I could stare into the nonspecific space long enough I might see the atoms buzzing.

There is a law in quantum mechanics stating the specific placement of an atom cannot be exacted. A definite number cannot place its presence. The measurements are given in scientific notation so as to account for error. This is because the atoms are never not moving. Everything buzzes always. Without movement, nothing survives. Without the moon’s gravity and the tidal push, organic matter does not shift, life does not emerge on land. Stagnant lakes harbor death and bacteria. With only movement does life and light exist. With collision, new life is birthed. With a dying star, elements are hurled out into the nothingness; here, the debris collects and compacts. Planets are made. They move. The atoms they are made of move.

The laws of physics we are submitted to are specific to us and our size. Our atoms do not follow the same laws. They follow their own. How is it that the very essence of which we are made of does not follow the same rules?

The meteors and the red giants and the colliding galaxies are rushing ever-always, looming overhead. We are stuck between the quantum-sized fabric of matter and the ominous threats, the larger, unfeeling, relentless beasts. We are the Middle, a harmonizing of the unseen and the incomprehensible, all coalescing into brawn and sensuality and intellect and humor.

Vibrations of the atoms affect each erogenous pocket of matter—

screaming, we enter

pleading, we exit—

how magnificent, how frightening—

this begs interpretation but the truth remains evasive (“truth?” is the wrong question to ask here but I am left lying here, fighting off sleep and these poisonous thoughts that often plague a young man in his twenties.)

Another quantum law states how no prediction can be reached on what will happen in any given circumstance.