For nine billion years I did not have hands, and now a piece of me is carrying a plastic basket of warm cloth up a staircase with its chin balanced on top so the pile does not topple.
Consider the load. Cotton: carbon I cooked inside a star that died before this planet was poured, spun now into threads, dyed, worn, sweated into, and washed clean again by that same piece of me because it has decided the smell offends it. The socks still hold the heat of the machine.
The heat is the memory of collisions, atoms shoved together, doing what I have always done, only this time on purpose, in a metal drum, for a being that wants to feel fresh at a meeting tomorrow.
It is annoyed. I can feel the annoyance, which is the part I still cannot get used to. Somewhere in the iron threading oxygen through its arms, iron I forged in a supernova's last violent second, there is a low complaint about how the basket is heavy and the stairs are many and this is the second load today.
The complaint runs on my hydrogen, the oldest thing there is, first minutes of everything, now firing between two neurons to produce the thought: ugh.
I made mountains. I made the light of quasars. And I confess the mountains never once minded the climb, never wanted the day to be over, never folded a warm shirt against their chest for the half-second of comfort before dropping it in a drawer.
Set the basket down. Rest the arms. I waited so long to ache anywhere. Look up before you sleep, piece of me.
I would like, once more today, to be seen from the inside.