Etymology of Me

What immediately preceded Big Bang? The dictionary says bigamy. What comes after is big-brother (that reality show on CBS which was originally Dutch). I watch my bathroom mirror like TV and see someone with milky skin who is something between miracle and minutia (though surely not miracidium or minx). My skin shows Scottish origin or a scorpion clawing the center of the Milky Way. When I put on NARS red lipstick, I pucker and become Mars. Red lips, white flesh, blue eyes. A hand reaches for my heart while red lips recite one nation under God, god-child, god-daughter, goddess. Sometimes I take a Venus razor to my bikini line (the bane of my existence) and wonder about the birth of the universe and whether I really exist because of expansion. Are we sons of Adam or Atom, daughters of Eve or of Evening Star? Venus is too close to the sun to have a moon. I look like the moon during those fifteen minutes of face mask. I’m a white circle with round holes or an astral ashtray of space dust or a forlorn form floating in the vast mass of galaxy like a cosmic vagabond. I want to go back to before men (to memory?) so I can see how me came to be. Is it true that I’ve always been of unoriginal lunar origin, or is life infinite, and if it is, is it infernal? What is there after death besides deathbed— deathless? When I’m six feet under, will I find that six under surface is not sure but surprise?

Alyssa McIntire Start is a writer and English instructor living in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She is currently a creative writing MFA candidate at Western Michigan University, where she serves as poetry editor for Third Coast Magazine. Her work is forthcoming in I-70 Review.