Chance Meeting

Sarah Archer

Light-years before we bumped carts in Frozen Foods, 
we were twined in the same star, our carbon cleaved,
along with a smidgen of laughing gas
and a spot of Napoleon’s teeth.
The apples frozen to flints in the pies in the freezer
were somewhere in there too, before they’ll wind through us
and land in the grave Atlantic. 
I won’t say goodbye.
Maybe we’ll meet again someday in a Crab Nebula,
or a crab. Forgive me
if I’m not quite myself. 
I’m nitrogen and empty space and a hypothetical soul,
trying to purchase an apple pie,
and I can’t be held responsible 
for the trajectory of cart wheels 
or the gray matter of my morality. 
I’m a wisp battling the universe, which is much older and larger than me,
which is me, all the me I never really had.
I’m living on borrowed bones,
and the galaxy is jealous.

The Science

This poem is inspired by this quote from Carl Sagan’s Cosmos: “The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.” Dust from supernova explosions provides the material from which new planetary systems eventually form.

The Poet

Sarah Archer's debut novel, The Plus One, was published by Putnam in the US, and is also available in the UK as How to Build a Boyfriend from Scratch. She is a Black List Screenwriting Mini-Lab fellow who has had material produced for Comedy Central and published short stories and poetry in numerous literary magazines. After living in Los Angeles, where she worked in literary management and TV and film development, she currently lives in North Carolina. You can find her online at saraharcherwrites.com, on Twitter at @SarahArcherM, or on Instagram at @SarahArcherWrites.

Next poem: Codex Exterminarius by Kim Goldberg