After the impossibility of the movement
of any object through time was raised in light
of the fact that, in time’s smallest unit,
no motion can take place (which is to say,
that any given object in it is at rest, or
if it isn’t, then the unit isn’t actually
the smallest, because it can still be divided
further, specifically: into a time when the object
was in one place, and then the time
just after, when it’s in another, and insofar as

any length of time is composed of a finite
number of such smallest units
during which, by definition, no motion
can take place, it follows that no motion
can take place in any aggregate of these
units either—which is to say, the flying arrow
is motionless, a paradox one might
be inclined to dismiss with other oddnesses
that don’t immediately fit our sense
of what is real, or what it profits us to take

seriously, especially in the face of what
we have to face) the need to commit to a new
kind of take on what it means to be
composed, and of how the properties
of the collective won’t by necessity reflect those
of its constituents, paradoxically
arose—the way no atom in my brain tonight
feels on its own capable of wanting to walk out into
the street to see the stars, but together,
they still want to, and it feels miraculous.