For Anna.




There are angstroms and there are

astronomical units and in the middle

of it all is us: pretending to listen to  
the teacher as we judder our ruler

on the edge of our desks, resetting

our odometers for the trip to Nana’s  
we promised to make but still haven’t,

snatching our hands out of the way as

the tape measure clatters and retracts.   
We know feet and metres. We’re okay

with inches and square centimetres,

can guess a kilometre, but we’re not so   
sure about ten to the power of negative

ten or fourteen point nine six times ten

to the power of nine. More than seven  
consecutive zeroes and it all gets a bit

beyond us. We know it takes four years

for a photon to find its way from Earth to  
Alpha Centauri, and three hours to drive

between Melbourne and Apollo Bay,

but how many walks to the milk bar make   
up a single baryonic acoustic oscillation?

How many Bohr radii span the hair you

left lying on my pillow? Which is greater:  
the ratio of the distance between the two

of us standing at the centre of an infinite

and expanding universe to the nominal   
edge of that infinite and expanding universe,

or the ratio of the time we’ve spent together

to all of the time that’s yet to come? Even  
if we could bodge up an answer, we’d still

need to give the numbers meaning, work out

how many birthdays that is, or how many   
laps around Lake Wendouree. We can cite

subatomic and galactic distances, mnemonically

cascade from yottametres to parsecs right on 
down through nanometres to the Planck length

itself. We can discuss and dissect all these

magnitudes, try to capture them with metaphor,  
but right here at the centre of our universe,

huddled between infinities, is us: me and you.