I sink into what I cannot feel, 
then what I cannot feel 
is me. Legs, shoulders, walls, ceiling, 
it could be I’m dying—the strings of senses 
severed. I rise clear as helium, my mind 
the burst and bloom of firework flowers 
sloughed from the worn husks of skin. Now 
there is only pulse and air, the slow bellows 
of lungs. Unmoored from the world 
I soar the pinprick dark, a vibration, awake 
as a particle-wave, every breath and beat 
the ringing of the universe 
within me, and the ringing is me: 
all-peace, all-one, the one-only 
everything, a dimensionless point, a timeless 

being, the equation solved. Only God 
can find me here in this neutrino ether-home, 
the balance of me coalescing and scattering 
a new sun. 

origin story 
the something and nothing 
of a sine wave 

Kat Lehmann

is a haiku poet, a potter, and a scientist based in Connecticut, USA. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and has been honored in The Haiku Foundation Touchstone Awards (individual poem), the Haiku Society of America Harold G. Henderson Haiku Award, and Japan’s Basho-an Award.

Kat is a Founding Co-Editor of Whiptail: Journal of the Single-Line Poem. She serves as a panelist in The Haiku Foundation Touchstone Distinguished Books Award (2021-present) and is a judge in the biennial Trailblazer Contest. Her third book, Stumbling Toward Happiness, shares her notes of self-exploration.

Kat’s work, including her experimental “sudo-ku” multi-haiku form, can be read at her website: https://katlehmann.weebly.com/

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Sensory Revelation Tank, haibun by Kat Lehmann which was nominated by MacQ for the Red Moon Anthologies, and selected for publication in Contemporary Haibun 17 (Red Moon Press, 2022).