Atoms and Mirrors

The teacher told us we

were made of atoms.

The world around us, too.

The atoms, she said,

were moving,

all of them,

all the time.

Moving so fast

as to seem solid,

but nothing

was really

solid.

Not even us.

Perhaps it was

growing up on fairytales,

but I never questioned

such strange truth.

In fact, I wanted nothing more

than to live into it.

To believe that my eyes

deceived me.

That my hand,

resting on the surface of my desk,

deceived.

Even the desk itself,

so still,

so seeming solid. 

Thus I spent the rest of my days

in that classroom

trying,

again

and again

and again,

to pass my hand

through the unyielding top

of my desk.

I closed my eyes

and tried to turn off my mind,

because I knew

it must be eyes and mind

that kept the moving atoms of my hand

and the moving atoms of my desk

from remembering

their true nature

and mingling.

# # #

As passionately as I believed

in the permeability of desks,

I was equally convinced

of another kind of passage.

The kind Alice made through that mirror.

Again and again,

I sat before the mirror

at the dressing table

in my bedroom,

gazing.

Not at the girl before me,

but at the perfect pink room

on the other side.

My room,

the one I sat in,

was pink, too.

But not nearly so fine.

I was certain of that.

And so, I sat and gazed

and gazed

until,

compelled,

I would rise,

mount my dressing table,

close my eyes,

and step toward that other,

better

room.

# # #

The problem,

I reminded myself,

each time I found desk

holding back hand,

each time I found nose

pressed against glass,

lay not in the failure of atoms to move

or mirrors to beckon.

It was

my mind,

my mind,

my unbelieving mind

that betrayed me.

I am convinced of it still.