Billions of years ago,
Before language and iPhones and photosynthesis,
Before God and sin and war,
Before cars and Paris and capitalism,
Life began with a separation.

A single cell of unknown origin
Deemed itself worthy of infinite reproduction
And cut itself off from a world
Totally alien to ours (but the same).

It erected a membrane; a shield;
A boundary between itself and the great,
Dark unknown of chaos and calamity
And, in doing so, banished us all to worldlessness.

Even now, the defining feature of the individual is the lack:
We awaken one day and realize we are not our mothers.
We are not our fathers or siblings or friends,
And we are not QUITE our own reflections in the mirror.

This first, great trauma exists as a reenactment of life
Tearing itself from the universe to make a new whole.
This first, great trauma births an individual being
Constantly in search of a universal it can never return to.

This first, great trauma is why I sit in my well-furnished
And spacious apartment with food and AC and Netflix
And feel a great rift between who I am and what I know;
A condition created before life on Earth had barely begun.