Mehvash Amin: a poem

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.