A seventy kilo person

is seven billion trillion atoms.

That's all, so they say.

Or is it?

What is an atom?

An atom is a nucleus

surrounded by electrons.

The atom's nucleus is a speck,

one millionth of a billionth

of its volume.

Less than a flea in a cathedral,

or an ant in a stadium,

Atoms are nothing,

they are empty, empty, empty,

we are – truly – hollow men,

whose illusory solidity is a gossamer matrix

containing mind-bogglingly vast, vacant space,

immense caverns, beyond imagining.

Inflated balloons are substantial

by comparison

 

With this emptiness within,

why do we not fall part?

Why do we miraculously hold together?

The reason?

Electrons have charges labeled`

‘negative’.

They ensure we cannot pass through each other

like ghosts, 

 

How dull. I pass through you

with my mind, but more would be fun, would be

‘positive’

 

What then of spirit?

Why should there be a tie from I

to such flimsy, unlikely vehicles?

When I die,

my atoms will take their enormous spaces off,

looking for new company.

Good luck to them,

I hope to be busy elsewhere.

 

 

The illustration is a standard school textbook image of the atom. It is so extremely wrong in terms of scale, that words fail.