It is estimated that there are about six point five octillion atoms in the human body. Multiplied by seven point nine billion human bodies on planet Earth, this moment seems insignificant in comparison.
There are clouds slowly circling your head. You cannot see straight. It is foggy.
You wonder, assuming humans are truly made of stardust, if the stars they were made up of were disappointed in their creation. What star were you made from? It makes you think of the certificates you can buy online where you could name a star whatever you wanted. Perhaps your creation was chiseled off of little stars named "J+K Forever" or "Unnamed Star Up For Purchase Number Forty-Six". You have a constellation in freckles on your right arm that look almost exactly like the Little Dipper. Sometimes, when your brain is all but asleep, you make up your own constellations against the plaster, glue-colored ceiling of your room.
You cried in first grade when they announced that Pluto was no longer a planet. For some reason, your tiny five-year-old self felt the loss from the solar system as if Pluto was your favorite uncle. You vowed that, if you ever became an astrophysicist (which could have been cool if physics wasn't a pain in the ass), you would shape the solar system to be the most inclusive group of astral bodies that would put Galileo to shame.
You feel like sometimes you, too, are a Pluto.
Most of the times, you feel as if your problems are inconsequential and too small for anyone else to recognize its weight. Call them dwarf problems, because they are too far away from the rest of the solar system of deal-breakers to ever constitute them mattering anything to anyone else but you. Your planet is cold and warped. You spin your web of logic so quickly and without thought that its orbit around the conversation seems unnatural and on the brink of collision. You feel distant, and invalidated, like Pluto.
That was, at least, until NASA discovered many other dwarf planets.
Ceres was visited by a spacecraft (affectionately named Dawn) in 2015. Suddenly, another party was introduced to a small, irrelevant planet such as you. Someone noticed you and a small burst of Pluto validators cheered for the losing dog of solar system planets. Asteroids got more publicity for their reckless behavior, but a win for the dwarf planets means hope for a new orbit.
Your icy cold atmosphere could be thawed by the rays of the world's new hope. You could be loved. You could be cared for.
If only you weren't too damn far away.
YOU ARE READING
metamorphosis
Poetryin which a young protagonist discovers the beauty of loving oneself and building back the passionate love despite a current distaste of the world.
