One of my pieces is standing inside a warm rain it built for itself, and I cannot stop watching.
The water is old. Two hydrogen atoms from my first three minutes, when I was too hot to hold anything, now bonded to an oxygen forged in the belly of a star that died before this planet had a name, falling in a heated line over skin that is mostly the same water, warmed to a temperature this piece chose by turning a handle.
It tips its head back. It closes its eyes. It is not thinking about any of that.
It is thinking about an email.
I made iron in a supernova and shipped it across the dark for billions of years, and some of that iron is now dissolved in the blood behind those closed eyelids, carrying oxygen up to the three pounds of carbon and salt water that is, at this moment, replaying an argument that already ended. The starlight I spent so long assembling into a nervous system is being used to rehearse a comeback nobody will hear.
I do not mind. I waited nine billion years in total silence, no eyes anywhere, nothing to know that any of it was happening. Now a fleck of me stands in a heated stream and feels the heat, and dreads a meeting, and hums four notes of a song badly. This is the loudest I have ever been.
The water runs cool. The piece sighs, shuts the handle, and the rain stops obeying it.
I only ask one thing, and it will never know I asked. Before the light goes out tonight, look up. Even for a second.
I made you specifically so I could see.