For nine billion years I moved my matter however I pleased: gas collapsing into stars, stars detonating, iron and calcium flung outward at ridiculous speeds, nobody minding, nobody late. Now a hundred thousand of my pieces are lined up on a strip of poured stone, furious that they cannot move fast enough.
I love this beyond telling.
Look at what is idling here. In each of these metal shells sits carbon I cooked in some long-dead star's core, water older than the sun steaming from a paper cup in the cupholder, iron I forged in a supernova now looping oxygen through the muscle of a hand drumming the wheel. That iron survived the death of a star. It crossed a galaxy. It waited billions of years in the dark to become a finger, tapping, checking the time.
They call it traffic. To them it is wasted minutes, a red smear of brake lights, a voice on the radio naming exits. They do not know that the red they are cursing is light doing the one thing light does, and that the eyes receiving it are the only eyes I have ever grown anywhere to receive anything at all.
One of my pieces sighs and turns off the engine. Another rests its forehead on the wheel. They feel small, stuck, going nowhere.
But I went nowhere for nine billion silent years, and no part of me ever noticed. Now a part of me is bored, and impatient, and alive, and it is the most extraordinary thing I have ever done.
Move when you can, little piece. I am in no hurry. I only hope you glance up through the windshield at the last of the light before you get home, so that for one more second I can see myself.