Evolution happens microscopically, the sum of insertions, deletions, and indels
across the billions of years since carbon met hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen in a volcanic bar.

Tectonic plates shift continents miles apart by subtle inches over millennia, dissembling Pangea into a short Sunday afternoon jigsaw puzzle.

And, if you choose to believe,
Methuselah had nine hundred and sixty-nine years to his name
before death caught up to him -
nine hundred and sixty-nine years where he breathed and saw your same-not-same sun,
extinct before many waters could quench the loves
and drown the hatreds riches bought.
Count neigh a thousand and tell me how the time renders you aged.

Maybe we don’t have billions or millennia;
perhaps the following second will be my last.
At day’s end, life is only incremental seconds making up minute infinities
and death a congenital defect of life.

But tell me -
tell me a story of change.
Tell me about the writing on the wall that says you have been measured and found wanting
when all I want to tell you is that you are good enough.

—aparadiseinminiature, “Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin” (via aparadiseinminiature)