My body is old, almost as old as the universe.

My body is made of particles formed in the Big Bang.

My electrons have whooped and spun for fourteen billion years

Dancing with implausible probabilities around their parent nuclei.

But now, I fizz and pop and crackle, as the fluorodeoxyglucose wanders in my veins

Briefly fracturing its atoms, shooting its gamma rays out.

Strictly lectured, I avoid pregnant woman and young children on the bus home

But that is not a new objective.

I am old, close to three score and ten.

When I was young, I was as immortal as my atoms.

They will continue in their cosmic dance even now I know

My whole is no longer greater than the sum of my parts.