It's easy to forget, when picking up a shell or a fragment of sea glass, how long a journey it undertook to reach your hand, the pilgrimage, the currents it has been conveyed by, a life of salt and whimsy and time. But here it is now, on the beach, in your palm; a meteorite from the other direction. Was matter like that, for you? Formed in those initial few moments of time, condensed from energy into an is, flung out into the black, made into suns, pushed about by cosmic currents, by gravity's kiss, and baked finally into solar systems, into deserts, and forests, and fauna, and atmospheres,
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