The Higgs Boson
I move tremendously,
though I am small. They
had to build a circuit larger
than amphitheaters
just so I could collide
with another of my kind
and tell them whether
God wrote this universe
in beautiful symmetry
or whether the poetry
of mathematics turns sour
as black milk in other
multiverses. Let them wait.
"125 points for symmetry,
140 for chaos, where
some said God would be."
There were whispers
that I would swallow the world.
Yet they go on. I am
Pandora's box,
the poisoned apple.
The cleaved atom.
They have played with
the uncertainty I carry
in my tiny being
before.
We collide. They wait
for their perfect
numbers to show up,
like designer lilies
in a glass vase.
They expect subservience
yet I give the odometer
a figure between
God and the Devil.
The air curdles in expectation
as they double-check, the
coffee cooling in their paper cups.
What, did they think
they could swat me down
like a fly? They called me
the God Particle.
Now they call me
Shiva, Creator and Destroyer.
But I shall not be pre-empted,
tin-foiled, packaged and
placed tidily in the
supermarket of their
calculations.
My manic pointillist being
will bring them prizes, but also
unease.
I shall be
the grain
of sand
lying between
knowledge
and nihilism
in agonising
counterpoint.
Mehvash Amin is a writer, poet, editor and publisher (Broken Leg Publications). Her poems have been published in journals such as Vallum, Sugar Mule and The Missing Slate, as well as in Abhay Khanna’s anthology, Capitals. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for her poem "Karachi". She is the force behind The Aleph Review, a yearly anthology of creative writing from Pakistan and elsewhere.