To String Theory

One pluck, you say, of the rubber band of existence
and suddenly my dead sister is risen,
sharpening knives in the kitchen and waiting

for me to find her,
because it is possible
that there are no new particles,

only the same ones we’ve already seen.

Imagine a string, you say, instead of a particle,
and then think,
think about frequency,

how the same string can make so many sounds.

And then my mother’s missing breast
hums back into existence
as my own,

the single stalk of bamboo I killed last year
springs to life
in a molecule of water,

and the sheets from all my childhood beds combine
to hold me in quiet sleep.
Pluck the string again, and the vibrations

could erase our most private moments of pain
or recreate the place where they happened, this time
in daylight, the edges filled with witnesses.

And if I find just the right chord,
those cruel fingers that tore me open
might vibrate into a million grains of pollen

and be carried off for something useful

while the universe
is again a moving, breathing thing, a fluctuation
in and out of possibility.

*Jenny Yang Cropp teaches composition at Minnesota State University, Mankato, where she is currently pursuing her MFA in creative writing. Her poems have appeared in World Literature Today 2, The Oklahoma Review, and Blue Earth Review.