I sketch my mother's face

with carbon, and see myself

in her shaded eyes,

breathe specks

still clinging to forgotten sweaters,

collect traces with the oxygen.

I drink her,

take into me, perhaps,

moments that the water

(hydrogen, hydrogen, oxygen)

pulled from a mug's ceramic lips.

Four percent.  It is how small we are.

Life craves hydrogen, the most abundant,

then oxygen, the next.  Carbon, nitrogen, etc.

All these things, all that create us, our universe –

four percent of what there is.

The rest – unreflecting dark.

My hydrogen will one day rain down
to be guzzled from water bottles,

my carbon inhaled by leaves

to be exhaled again by strangers.

I sketch my mother's face,

and see myself

in her shade,

in faint carbon

smeared onto paper.