And So I Became a Universe
And So I Became a Universe
It was the big bang in reverse, all my planets pulling in. I thirsted for light, found gravity. I compressed down to a dense clump, orbited you. I couldn’t stay in that parched place. There was no stasis, only a choice: implosion or explosion.
Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash
The Prompt
This poem is about the excruciating but ultimately heart-opening, life-affirming, joy-expanding choice to get a divorce—which is not a choice good Mormon girls are supposed to make. I haven’t been a good Mormon girl for quite some time now (or even a Mormon girl of any kind), but bits of our upbringing tend to cling to us, don’t they? They tuck into our bones or creak in our joints. It took me years to overcome the shame and stigma that I had absorbed about divorce so that I could simply do what I needed to do.
For today’s prompt, I offer up the word choice. Maybe that words sparks something for you all on its own. Wonderful! Go write about it! If not, here are a few questions to play with (you don’t need to play with them all, just see which ones spark something for you, and go where the heat is) . . .
What choices have you made so far today? Which of those choices do you deem important, and which trivial, and why? Have you ever made a seemingly trivial choice that had significant repercussions? Have you ever agonized over a decision only to discover it didn’t really matter much in the end? What’s the hardest choice you’ve ever made or seen someone you care about face? Was the choice you (or they) made really a choice? Given the whole of the circumstances, could you/they have done differently?
What does it feel like to choose? How do you do it? What does it feel like to be stuck between choices? Is there some other way you wish you could go about the whole thing—like with the help of a time machine, a crystal ball, or a punch card good for ten do-overs? How does the experience of choice tie in with the broader reality of what it means to be human?
I dearly hope that you’ll choose to share your poems here in the comments thread! (Yes, I’m a nerd—I’m not certain that this a choice, but if it were, I don’t think I’d change it.)
P.S. I did something kinda weird with my poem. The title is the implied final line. Did that work for you? Did it make sense? This is one of those poems that I’m not quite content with, so I welcome any feedback on your experience with it.
This is beautiful, Karri! I love the way you ground the poem with such rich images right off the bat. So many great lines, too - “the only place I’ll jump is to conclusions,” and that lovely ending - “a soft voice whispers firmly in the wind / you must choose.” This indecision is all too relatable and so engagingly expressed!
Your title, rooted in the implication of your last line, worked for me (the whole poem worked for me!). I will confess that my inner rhymer was dying to find a way to add in the word "oasis" after "stasis," particularly because of the way you tied "thirsting" and "parched" together (you know how I can get about rhyming). Here's my poem, which is also a sort of reversal on the prompt:
*
Choices made without
the sunlight of consciousness
are not choices at all
but reactions
that erupt like fungus
from musty corners within,
feeding off the carbon fixation
of unhealed wounds
and
unmet needs.
With the next stiff wind,
spores drift complacently,
mushrooming easily, invasively.
Silently
carpeting over every
path home.