From supernova to spinach
A murmuration from my molecules
I just learned that the iron in my blood came from a star that exploded billions of years ago.
I am made of leftovers from the universe’s biggest disasters.
Which feels about right on brand for me.
Here’s the poem that I had to write about my messy and ancient molecules.
(Audio recorded from a very busy Scooters Coffeehouse!)
I have millions of immortal atoms from a dead star in the bones of the hand I am writing with right now. These iron atoms floated through space and down through our biosphere and into the spinach my parents made me gag down around the dinner table. These unbreakable atoms were all former suns, space travelers, clouds, rock, soil and salad before taking a turn inside of me. I wonder what they think about being with me as I explore the world. A human who is neither fire, water, earth or air, but a wisp of worry, ritual and wandering. I imagine these atoms whisper to each other during their yearly summit: “If he only knew what he was made of, he would never doubt himself again.” Maybe that is why I have become so quiet lately. I don’t reach out to friends as much or sing in choirs. I just sit so still in the morning dark, hands open on my lap, listening to the sweet murmurations coming from my molecules. ~ john roedel
VERY HUMAN WRITERS WANTED!
A few times a year I get to sit in a room with a small group of strangers who become, by the end of the weekend, something closer to siblings.
We call it a writing retreat, but that’s mostly to give the IRS something to file.
What it really is:
a few days of permission.
Permission to listen to the part of you that’s been trying to get a word in edgewise for a decade. Permission to write the thing you’ve been too embarrassed to write. Permission to cry at lunch. Permission to laugh at the wrong moment. Permission to not know yet.
I don’t teach craft.
There are plenty of people better at that than me. What I do is hold the room while you go find the poem that’s been waiting for you in the basement of yourself.
You don’t have to be a writer. You don’t have to have written anything before. You don’t have to know what you want to say. You just have to show up with the part of you that’s tired of pretending it doesn’t have something to say.
If any of this lands and if you’ve been feeling the slow tug of something in you that wants to come out on paper…then come sit with us.
There’s a chair waiting for you.
So is your human voice.
John—
The line about iron struck something ancient in me.
Because this is death doula knowledge, too.
The body carries stars very literally. Iron forged in stellar collapse moving through blood and marrow and heartbeat until one day it returns itself to ash again. People say “stardust” poetically, but under the poetry there is chemistry. Supernovae. Pressure. Collapse. Elemental inheritance.
And what startled me most after death work was realizing how often death itself resembles the cosmos.
Ashes under a microscope do not look empty.
They look like galaxies under glass.
Clusters. Mineral shimmer. Strange branching structures that resemble nebulae and star fields and planetary dust. Tiny heavens suspended in grey-white particulate matter. The first time I saw cremains magnified, I remember thinking with almost frightening clarity:
we never stopped being astronomical.
Even bone fragments can carry this strange celestial architecture. Calcium whitening like distant light. Carbon dark as interstellar dust. Blackened fragments beside pale mineral bloom. It does not feel metaphorical when you witness it directly. It feels cyclical. Physical. Almost unbearably tender.
From supernova to spinach to bloodstream to ash.
And still—
under magnification—
the universe recognizes its own shape.